POLITICS: US Blocks UN Protection Force for Palestinians

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 2 2000 (IPS) - The United States is blocking efforts to summon a meeting of the Security Council to discuss a proposal for a UN protection force in the violence-torn Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza.

“The international community cannot allow this Israeli military campaign of terror to continue,” Ambassador Nasser Al-Kidwa, the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations, said Wednesday.

As the Palestinian death toll rose to over 150, Al-Kidwa has urged the 15-member Security Council “to establish a United Nations Protection Force to be dispatched to the occupied Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem, with the aim of providing much-needed protection to the Palestinian civilian population”.

Asked for his comments on the proposed protection force, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters: “It is a matter for the Security Council to decide. The Secretary-General has not expressed an opinion on it.”

In addition to the increased number of killings, Al-Kidwa said, “the excessive and indiscriminate use of force by the Israeli occupying forces has caused the additional injury of more than 200 Palestinians, many of whom remain in critical condition”.

The Security Council has been meeting behind closed doors to discuss the ongoing developments in the West Bank and Gaza.

But US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke has been quoted as saying that he would oppose any moves to hold another meeting of the Security Council, and even if it did take place, he would veto any resolution critical of Israel. The other four members with veto powers are the United Kingdom, France, China and Russia.

Any negative resolution, Holbrooke warned, will have an “explosive” effect on the situation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. “We have made this abundantly clear to our friends and colleagues in the Security Council,” he added.

At a meeting of the Council last month, the United States stood alone as it abstained on a resolution condemning the excessive use of force by the Israelis.

Subsequently, the 189-member General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding the immediate cessation of violence and the use of force, and also called for the establishment of “a mechanism of inquiry” into the continued killings.

The resolution was adopted by a vote of 92 in favour, to six against, with 46 abstentions. Besides Israel, the only countries that stood by the United States were four tiny Pacific island states, namely Micronesia, Marshall Island, Nauru and Tuvalu.

The four countries have a total population of just over 205,000: Nauru (about 10,400), Micronesia (about 126,000), Marshall Islands (about 59,000) and Tuvalu (about 10,200).

“None of the tiny states is of any political significance. Or are even known to exist – in the minds of people outside the United Nations,” an Arab diplomat told IPS.

Perhaps the fast food chains in the United States have a far bigger staff on their payrolls than the combined population of all four states which voted against the resolution, he added.

The proposal for a protection force is being strongly pushed by the 22-member League of Arab States, with the Palestinian Observer Mission taking a lead role.

If the Security Council refuses to discuss the proposal, Al-Kidwa is likely to go before the General Assembly. But unlike a Security Council resolution, an Assembly resolution has no political or legal force behind it.

Meanwhile, the battle raging across the West Bank and Gaza is certainly not being fought on a level killing field: it’s an uneven fight between gun-toting Israelis and rock-throwing Palestinians.

Israel, which has one of the strongest armies in the Middle East, has used helicopter gunships, missiles, rockets and battle tanks with devastating effect against the mostly unarmed Palestinians.

The New York Times reported that an Arab businessman in Dubai ran a newspaper ad announcing plans to ship some 50 truckloads of stones and 500,000 slingshots for use by Palestinian protesters.

Just before the first Palestinian uprising broke out in 1989, the Israeli government launched a vigorous tourist promotion drive in neighbouring Cyprus.

Extolling the virtues of the biblical land, the ad urged Cypriots to visit Israel, described as “only a stone’s throw” from Cyprus. But the ad was frantically pulled out of circulation when the unintended message literally hit closer to home.

As rocks and stones came raining heavily on the Israelis last week, the army continued to deploy helicopter gunships to fire rockets into the offices of the Palesintian leader Yasser Arafat.

“All these things cannot shake one eyelash from the eyelashes of a Palestinian child holding a Palestinian stone to defend holy Jerusalem, the capital of the Palestinian state,” Arafat said.