MIDEAST: U.N. Dispute on Israeli Settlements Muddles U.S. Role

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 2 1997 (IPS) - For the United Nations, a dispute between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) over settlement activity around Jerusalem has become the one issue that will not go away.

The United States, Israel’s main ally, tried to push the issue off the U.N. agenda by using its veto twice in the U.N. Security Council last month to block criticism of Israeli settlements. But the Palestinians are still pushing for the United Nations to act — even if it means bypassing the United States, which has tried to play the role of an impartial broker in the peace process.

“Frankly, all of us are fed up, the whole world is fed up with the Israeli government,” Nasser al-Kidwa, Palestine’s U.N. envoy, said Wednesday. “We (have) started to have doubts that the Israeli government is looking for a way out of the peace process.”

As a result, though the Palestinians will continue to cooperate with the United States, they will also continue to seek U.N. involvement to stop the settlements and possibly even incremental penalties against Israel if it moves ahead with its construction, al-Kidwa told IPS.

But U.S. officials counter that the United Nations is not the place to resolve Israeli-Palestinian problems and are seeking a “cooling-off” period between the two sides.

Palestinians, upset at Israeli plans to build settlements in the Arab town of Jabal Abu Ghuneim, south of East Jerusalem, took the dispute twice to the Security Council last month, only to be rebuffed both times by U.S. vetoes. The Palestinians, however, won overwhelming support for their position at the 185-nation General Assembly, where only the United States and Israel opposed a resolution that criticises the continuation of settlement activity.

Al-Kidwa says the General Assembly may take up the matter again in a “special emergency session” that would ask for the sending of a U.N. mission to the region. He predicts overwhelming support for the Palestinians’ position in the Assembly.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in response to a request from Qatar, Tuesday asked the 185 U.N. member-states whether the General Assembly should hold such a meeting on the basis of “uniting for peace” — a formulation which is used if the 15- nation Security Council is unable to resolve a crisis.

If more than half the nations agree, the emergency session could be held within 24 hours, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

Although General Assembly resolutions are normally non-binding, in the rare occasions that the body holds such emergency meetings after the Security Council fails to act, Assembly votes can have the legally binding effects of Council votes.

Eckhard says that such special emergency sessions have been held only nine times in U.N. history, the last time being in 1982. He added that, for the Palestinians, such a meeting could have special political significance, simply for being an emergency meeting.

That is clearly an important factor for Palestinians. Al-Kidwa argues that the vote at such a meeting could help display the level of international support the Palestinians enjoy in their claim that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is trying to impose unilateral changes in the peace process.

“We are not dealing with a slight disagreement between the two sides,” he said. “There is a clear Israeli attempt to impose facts on the ground” — the Palestinian way of referring to any Israeli construction that can change the demographic composition of occupied Palestinian territory.

The Jabal Abu Ghuneim housing project has proved a more durable problem than previous settlements. Palestinians have been wary about the intentions of Netanyahu’s rightist coalition. More importantly, PNA President Yasser Arafat warned here last month, the new housing would isolate Arab-dominated East Jerusalem, which Israel claims as part of its undivided capital but which the PNA also wants to be the capital of an independent Palestinian state.

Since Israel broke ground for the settlement, there have been two weeks of daily clashes in Palestinian zones, including the deaths of four Palestinians Tuesday and an apparent firebomb attack on a bus carrying Israeli soldiers Wednesday.

By bringing the crisis to the United Nations once more, the Palestinians would only “internationalise” the dispute and prolong or even worsen tensions, David Peleg, Israel’s U.N. ambassador, warned Wednesday.

Rather than push ahead with further criticism of Israel, Peleg said, the Palestinians should consider Netanyahu’s proposal to move ahead with “final status” negotiations on the fate of the Palestinian territories.

Under the terms of the 1993 Oslo Accords signed between Arafat and then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, those talks — which would determine all the most pressing issues, including Jerusalem — were to have begun in March 1997.

U.S. President Bill Clinton’s administration is considering whether Washington also should push for final status talks, U.S. diplomats said here. But Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in her own visit to the United Nations this week, carefully avoided any specific details of what Washington would propose, and even refused to say whether she would visit the Middle East.

Albright stuck to the administration’s line that the Jabal Abu Ghuneim construction was “a decision we wish had not been made,” but reiterated Washington’s argument that the United Nations should not get involved in the dispute.

Even some U.S. experts on the Middle East were disappointed with the Security Council vetoes, which former Secretary of State James Baker said sent “conflicting signals” about U.S. opposition to the Israeli settlements.

“I’m really disappointed with what has happened,” Baker said Wednesday. “I am disappointed that we have let bombs and bulldozers determine the process.” The terrorist bombs were unacceptable, he added, but Israeli bulldozers were “just as bad” because they undercut the basis for the peace negotiations.

But time may be running out for Washington to avoid a U.N. resolution, which could undercut its role as the lead mediator in the conflict. Arab anger about the U.S. vetoes is rising, and even Jordan’s King Hussein urged Clinton to intervene more forcefully.

“We need the United States to help us,” Hussein told reporters in Washington Tuesday after meeting Clinton. “Let’s hope we see a more active policy from the United States.”

Unless some party is able to convince Israel to stop its current policies, al-Kidwa warned, “the political confrontation with the Israeli side will continue.”