MIDEAST: U.N. General Assembly Condemns Israeli Settlements

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 25 1997 (IPS) - The United Nations has injected itself into the current Israeli-Palestinian housing dispute as the 185-nation U.N. General Assembly voted for a resolution criticising Israel Friday.

The resolution garnered wide approval, with 134 countries voting in its favour and only Israel, the United States and Micronesia voting against it. Eleven other nations — including such developed nations as Australia, Canada and Norway — abstained from the vote.

The Assembly declared all Israeli efforts to change or determine Jerusalem’s legal status “null and void” and called on Israel to halt construction in the Arab-majority town of Jabal abu Ghuneim, south of Jerusalem. It also urged Secretary-General Kofi Annan to report to the Assembly in two months on Israeli compliance with the resolution, after which the Assembly may take further action.

The special “emergency session” of the General Assembly — only the 10th time such a session has been held in U.N. history — thus endorsed the Palestinians’ main goals: a call to stop settlement activity in Jabal abu Ghuneim and to assert the territorial integrity of the Palestinian zones of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. The United Nations, and Israeli- Palestinian peace accords, leave the status of Jerusalem to be determined later, although Israel claims the entire city as its capital.

A similar vote in the Assembly last month resulted in 130 votes in favour of a resolution also criticising the Jabal abu Ghuneim settlement, with the United States and Israel the only nations voting against it. But the Friday vote, because of its emergency status, is legally binding, unlike most Assembly resolutions.

The Palestine National Authority (PNA) forced the topic to stay on the U.N. agenda only after the United States twice used its veto power last month in the 15-nation Security Council — which traditionally is the only U.N. organ capable of issuing binding resolutions on security issues. The two vetoes blocked any Council action to halt the settlements and angered the Palestinians.

Washington again objected to U.N. involvement in the crisis Friday. “The Security Council and the General Assembly should not insert themselves into issues that the negotiating partners have decided will be addressed in their permanent status talks,” U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson said.

“Each vote in favour of this resolution adds to the difficulty of reaching a just, lasting, and comprehensive peace in the Middle East,” he added.

But many diplomats here have long objected to the U.S. insistence that the United Nations stay out of the process. The PNA hammered on the housing dispute as a crisis point for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, especially after the Israeli government followed the vetoes by breaking ground at Jabal abu Ghuneim on a housing project intended to accommodate 25,000 Jewish settlers.

“What is left of the peace process?” asked Palestinian envoy Nasser al-Kidwa Thursday as he kicked off a two-day debate on the settlements. “Not only do all of Israel’s policies and actions represent violations of international law…but indeed they also represent the practical abandonment of the peace process and a declaration of the resumption of occupation.”

Other countries also lined up to condemn the new settlement plans by rightist Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government, which Colombian Ambassador Julio Londono Paredes compared to a “cold shower” to anyone hoping for peace in the Middle East.

But the main target of many diplomats has been not Israel but the Security Council, with several officials pointedly noting that the issue would not have come to the larger Assembly if the Council could only have agreed on a resolution.

“I think it would have been better for the Security Council to have acted on this issue,” conceded Council President Antonio Monteiro of Portugal. “What is regrettable is that sometimes the Security Council is incapable of taking its own responsibility.”

For some members, the two vetoes — which pitted the United States against the other 14 members on Mar 7, and against all the others save Costa Rica two weeks later — show why veto power in the U.N. executive organ should be scrapped. Only the Council’s five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States — can veto resolutions.

Londono Perez criticised the U.S. vetoes, noting that the United Nations had to speak out on the Middle East or else risk irrelevance. “It is precisely for this reason that our delegation has opposed and will continue to oppose the use of the veto, and we will continue to regard it as an unfortunate consequence of the Cold War,” he added.

“The Council’s credibility has been compromised,” added Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury of Bangladesh. “The failure of the Security Council has encouraged Israel to intensify its unilateral action. In a premeditated manner, Israel continues to paralyse and strangle the peace process with the intention to subjugate perpetually the Palestinian people.”

The current Assembly vote is not the first time that the body has challenged the Council’s failure to act on Middle Eastern concerns. Since the 1956 Suez crisis, in which Israel, France and Britain united to attack Egypt, six out of 10 emergency sessions of the Assembly have focused on the Middle East. Most have sought to overturn U.S. support for Israel.

That is a trend which has upset the Israeli government. “Now that this emergency session has finally been convened, the question is, was this session really necessary?” asked Israeli Ambassador David Peleg. “How will it influence the Middle East peace process?”

Peleg chided the General Assembly for putting the Jabal abu Ghuneim controversy “at the top of the U.N. agenda” at the same time that massacres are being committed in central Africa and Algeria. Despite criticisms, he argued, Israel has kept its peace commitments by releasing all female Palestinian prisoners and starting planning to construct an airport and seaport in Gaza.

But al-Kidwa disputed the idea that Israel has abided by the spirit of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords signed by late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PNA President Yasser Arafat. He charged that Israel has continued to try to change the demographic composition of Arab-majority East Jerusalem, and halted progress on a range of other agreements.

“The promised benefits of peace have not been fulfilled and, worse, the basis of the peace process itself is being destructed,” al-Kidwa said.

Echoing President Bill Clinton’s regrets about Israel’s hardline policies, even Richardson conceded that the Jabal abu Ghuneim decision had made matters worse. “It undermines the trust and confidence so badly needed in creating the appropriate environment for successful negotiations,” the U.S. ambassador said. “We regret that it was taken.”