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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2004, pages 32-33, 37 United Nations Report After a Slow Start, Israel’s U.N. “Charm Offensive” Sputters to a Halt
By Ian WilliamsARIEL SHARON went to Moscow in November and seemed to have convinced himself, and even some of the Israeli reporters who accompanied him, that he had persuaded President Vladimir Putin to drop Russia’s proposed Security Council resolution endorsing the role of the Quartet—the U.N., EU, Russia and the U.S.—in the Middle East road map. Not only did Putin carry on, however, but the Russian resolution was passed unanimously as Security Council Resolution 1515, with even the U.S. supporting it. In response, the Israeli Foreign Ministry released a statement that Israel “accepted the road map along with 14 clarifications that it decided upon, and this is the one and only diplomatic plan that Israel is prepared to carry out.” It added that “the ‘road map,’ as accepted by Israel, can be carried out only through negotiations and agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. Judging in relation to the plan’s implementation will be in the hands of the United States. Israel will not accept any other intervention in implementing the plan.” But that is not what Resolution 1515 said. As happens so often, Israeli officials seemed to be talking to themselves—but, on this rare occasion, Washington was not listening, and voted for the resolution anyway, without the Israeli conditions. It does show, however, the almost pathological fear that Israel has for U.N. decisions. During his Moscow visit, according to the Jerusalem Post, Sharon had told the Russians, “The U.N. is hostile toward Israel, even in humanitarian issues. U.N. representatives openly lied in the affair of the three soldiers who were kidnapped by the Hezbollah in Lebanon. I know U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan very well. His position is unreservedly anti-Israel. If anyone thinks that we will abandon our fate to the mercies of the secretary-general of the U.N.—an organization saturated with lies, hostility, and malice toward Israel—he is mistaken.” It seems a strange way to run a charm offensive in the U.N., which is what Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman had announced earlier in the year. As part of its effort, in November Israel introduced its first U.N. resolution in almost 30 years—without consulting its American ally, which was busy trying to reduce the number of Middle Eastern resolutions, almost all of which, of course, condemn Israel for its behavior in the occupied territories. Countering an Arab group resolution on the plight of Palestinian children under occupation, the Israelis introduced one deploring the plight of Israeli children under terrorist attacks. Although some of the Arabs wanted to jump at the bait and simply vote the resolution down, the Egyptians won the day in the debate, and the resolution was amended to refer to the plight of children in the Middle East, with additions about international law and foreign occupations. A seething Israeli delegation withdrew the resolution, with Deputy Israeli Ambassador Arye Mekel declaring that “the Arab group used its automatic majority in an unfair and unwarranted way, and turned everything upside down.” He was especially indignant that the amendment was moved by “Egypt, a country that has peaceful relations with Israel.” Although “none of this stuff is binding,” Mekel explained dismissively, he added that “this was a test of the United Nations—and it failed. The loss is the loss of the U.N. If they want the U.N. to get involved in the peace process, they should remember that Israel is 50 percent of the process and that this does not help to get the U.N. engaged.” If the Israeli delegation feels that it is banging its head against a brick wall, it made no difference to its continuing plan to build the wall so that delegations can bang Israel’s head against it. A month ago, following the U.S. veto of a resolution on the barrier, the Palestinians took the issue to the Emergency General Assembly. Since the Israelis and the U.S. always declare that the General Assembly is powerless, the Palestinians decided to use a power it indisputably does have, which is to refer issues, such as the legality of the wall under the Geneva Conventions and U.N. resolutions, to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. While agreeing to demand that Israel should stop and reverse its wall building inside the occupied territories, the EU persuaded the Arabs to defer the issue of a referral to the Court and instead call on the secretary-general to report on the wall. The resolution passed—with the usual suspects, Israel and the U.S., against. When Annan returned with his report, he found, to no one’s amazement, that the Israelis had continued to build the wall, and that it was a bad thing. His report detailed the effects on the Palestinian population, as well as the discriminatory nature of their treatment in the “closed areas” compared to that of Israeli citizens. The secretary-general estimated that 16.6 percent of the West Bank, home to almost 400,000 Palestinians, will be on the Israeli side of the wall—along with some some 320,000 settlers. As soon as the report was issued, Palestinian Ambassador Nasser El Kidwa called for a resumption of the Special General Assembly session, which he expected the first week in December, and announced that he would indeed be pushing for the referral to the World Court. Other U.N. reports reinforced the reasons why Israel’s charm offensive crumbled even before it began. Earlier in November, former Swiss Socialist MP Jean Ziegler, special rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the “right to food,” reported that 22 percent of Palestinian children under 5 were suffering from grave malnutrition—a three-fold increase since September 2000—while 9.3 percent of children under the age of 5 were suffering from acute malnutrition, which meant that they had brain damage or were damaged for life from chronic malnutrition. His damning indictment added that 15.6 percent of children over 5 suffered from acute anemia and related sicknesses. Food consumption had fallen by over 30 percent in three years, and 61 percent of all Palestinian households could eat only one meal a day. He put the blame for this squarely on the methods adopted by Israel for its occupation, such as closures, curfews and the hindering of circulation of people and of merchandise, and the expansion of settlements and military zones around Palestinian agricultural land. Unusually, the Israeli authorities actually met and discussed Ziegler’s mission with him but they got little change from the rapporteur. In fact, the Israeli ambassador in Geneva tried—unsuccessfully—to quash his report. Unrepentant, Ziegler told a press conference at the U.N., “Collective punishment is forbidden by international law. A Palestinian child who suffers grave malnourishment or brain damage has nothing to do with suicide bombers.” He continued, “The collective punishment that is happening at this very moment in the occupied Palestinian territories has to be denounced by the international community. Israeli settlements and the security zones protecting them are a clear breach of international law, as is the construction of the wall.” Ziegler concluded by pointing out that more than 80 percent of Palestinians in the occupied territories were dependent on international agencies for survival. This is something that more and more of the agencies are thinking about as well, and several have wondered aloud why they should put up with Israeli restrictions on their work, harassment of local and international staff, taxation and transport charges and so on. After all, they point out, under international law, the international community is paying for what is the occupation authorities’ responsibility. The agencies have been around long enough, however, not to expect gratitude. In fact, they have come close to threatening to pull out—thereby leaving Israel with the bill. The agencies’ directors sent a joint letter to the Israelis pointing out that “Several organizations indicated that they are now seriously considering whether they should continue to work at all under these circumstances,” mentioning Israeli shooting at relief workers, the sudden closures and other restrictions put upon their work. One example was the IDF’s refusal to allow the World Food Organization to return empty containers from Gaza to the port of Ashdod, which means that the WFO has to pay for the containers and their storage. UNRWA, the largest agency in the field, has the biggest problems, even though it is, in a perverse way, indispensable for the Israeli occupation since, through it, the international community pays for feeding, health and education for the Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza—instead of the Israeli authorities whose legal responsibility it is. While the government of Israel recognizes that on one level, however, its supporters have recently stepped up their campaign of vilification against the agency and its director, Peter Hansen. In the General Assembly in October Israeli Ambassador Mekel accused UNRWA of being “biased,” and alleged that Hansen had made statements that “could be construed as lending legitimacy to the use of terrorism or the promotion of the political aims of the Palestinians.” While happy to destabilize and weaken Hansen and the agency, it would of course be a real nightmare scenario for Sharon if pro-Israel groups in Congress succeeded with their campaign there and cut back the U.S. contribution to the agency, which runs at over $300 million a year, since Israel itself would have to pick up the shortfall! It is likely that the frenzied attacks on Hansen and UNRWA are more to do with American groups and legislators trying to prove themselves more pro-Israel than each other in the run up to the impending U.S. elections, rather than any Israeli government-directed campaign. Certainly, one of the participants is the so-called U.N.-Watch, a Geneva-based organization whose sole fund-raising pitch is to attack U.N. “bias,” against Israel. Pro-Israel legislators in Congress earlier had secured an audit by the U.S. General Accounting Office, but were disappointed when the GAO report in November found no evidence of the terrorist involvement the congressmen had alleged and, indeed, discovered what any congressional aide could have discovered with one telephone call: that UNRWA has no mandate nor ability to govern or police the refugee camps. The Israeli government did tell the GAO that 16 UNRWA staff were detained, of whom three were convicted for “security-related” crimes, but UNRWA points out that Israel had never shared this information with it, and that, compared to the size of UNRWA’s locally hired staff in the territories—over 12,000—this is a tiny number. Perhaps more mordantly amusing, in a reply to the Jerusalem Post to U.N. Watch allegations, Hansen admitted that there had been one occasion in January 2002 when Palestinian militants commandeered an UNRWA school as a firing position. Hansen pointed out, however, that over the same period the IDF had commandeered UNRWA installations no less than 38 times! But while the Palestinians are winning the Battle of the Reports, the documents themselves show that Israel is, literally in many cases, getting away with murder in the territories. And the congressional record shows that Israel can do anything it wants, and the U.S. will still keep sending the checks. Ian Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations. |
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