Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, Human Rights, Middle East & North Africa

HUMAN RIGHTS: UN Commission Condemns Israel for Hamas Leader’s Death

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Mar 24 2004 (IPS) - The United Nations Commission on Human Rights condemned the assassination of Palestinian sheik Ahmad Yassin, spiritual leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), by Israeli troops in Gaza on Monday.

Israel and some of the countries that support it said the attack was a punitive act against an instigator of terrorism, but the majority in the international arena apparently saw it as an extrajudicial execution.

The Commission’s resolution, approved in a vote of 31 in favour, 18 abstentions and two against, put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the centre of the debates of the highest U.N. authority on human rights.

The 53-member body takes up the Middle East question in its annual sessions, and has tended to focus on the second Palestinian rebellion, known as Intifada, since it erupted in September 2000.

But this time the debate was fuelled by the death of Yassin, one of the founders of the radical Islamic group Hamas, and by the dividing wall that Israel is building with significant stretches cutting into Palestinian territory.

The resolution approved in a special session of the Commission on Wednesday expresses a harsh condemnation of the ongoing and serious violations of human rights in the Palestinian occupied territories and of the "tragic assassination" of Yassin in particular.

Yassin, 67 and wheelchair-bound, died alongside seven other civilians. As they left a Gaza mosque they were hit by rockets fired from Israeli helicopters.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon congratulated the troops who participated in the attack and anticipated that new strikes would take place against other top Palestinian leaders.

Nabil Ramlawi, a Palestinian observer of the sessions of the Commission on Human Rights, said Israel claims the right to be judge and jury in deciding who is to live and who is to die.

Israeli representative in Geneva, Yaakov Levy, said the statement of condemnation, proposed by Pakistan on behalf of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), was an attempt to shift attention away from human rights violations elsewhere.

Many such violations occur in the OIC member countries, which is a mockery of the objectives of the Commission, according to Levy.

He said that since the Intifada began, 945 Israelis, foreign tourists and workers have died in violent incidents.

Those attacks were instigated by Hamas, an organisation led by Yassin, said the diplomat.

Hamas is the leading Islamic organisation in the Palestinian territories. It emerged after the beginning of the first Intifada, in 1987, with its main objective being the unconditional withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories.

The group does not recognise the right of an Israeli state to exist, nor the institutions that were officially recognised as a result of the Oslo Peace Accords in 1994, like the Palestinian National Authority.

Hamas, which has perpetrated dozens of suicide attacks against Israeli civilians, has a political, religious and social wing, which focuses on spiritual matters and on financing schools and health centres in the West Bank and Gaza.

Levy maintained that the Yassin killing "was not an act of vengeance" but was part of a strategy against terrorism and its sources.

Australia agreed with that viewpoint, supporting "Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism. Hamas is a terrorist organisation that has used suicide attacks to kill many innocent Israelis," said Ambassador Caroline Millar.

Australia and the United States were the only two countries to vote against the resolution.

U.S. delegate Richard S. Williamson said the Commission on Human Rights made a mistake by dedicating a special session to singling out only one country without questioning those who promote terror and violence.

On Tuesday, in the U.N. Security Council, the United States thwarted a strongly-worded condemnation of the assassination of Yassin.

A Security Council statement, which carries less weight than a resolution, was blocked by Washington because the text did not mention the "terrorist activities" of Hamas.

The European Union, which ultimately abstained from the Commission on Human Rights vote Wednesday in Geneva, aligned itself with the countries that condemned the extrajudicial assassination of Yassin.

Israel must put an end to such practices, said Mary Whelan, representative from Ireland, speaking on behalf of the EU.

The European bloc recognises Israel’s right to protect its citizens from terrorism, but also maintains that the country cannot claim the right to carry out extrajudicial assassinations, said Whelan.

She pointed out, as EU spokespersons have generally been doing, that the 10 countries that will join the bloc on May 1 support the statements of the official representative.

But this time, amongst the countries that abstained from voting on the condemnation were Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina, two European states with majority Muslim populations.

In contrast, the rest of the Islamic countries on the Commission on Human Rights supported the condemnation. Also voting in favour were China, India, Russia, the African countries, and the Latin American countries Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico and Paraguay.

The other Latin American members abstained: Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras and Peru.