POLITICS: US Rules out Security Council Action on Mideast Crisis

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 13 2000 (IPS) - The United States Thursday bluntly ruled out any action by the UN Security Council to contain the escalating violence in the Middle East which has resulted in the deaths of over 90 Palestinians since last week.

US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke told reporters that Washington will “strongly oppose” any attempts to bring the issue before the 15-member Security Council.

As one of the five permanent members of the Council – along with Britain, France, China and Russia – the United States can not only wield its influence to block any meetings, but also veto any resolution brought before the 15-member Council.

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.

The new round of violence Thursday also threatened to derail the delicate negotiations being conducted by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan who has already met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat.

On Wednesday, Annan announced that Palestinian and Israeli officials had assured him that a meeting will be convened at the highest level of a trilateral security committee to deal with the current unrest.

This committee, which was set up as a result of a US-brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace accord in 1998, is made up of senior security officials of Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the United States.

But this announcement has been overshadowed by new violence which could endanger the negotiations being conducted by Annan. A UN spokesman said Thursday that since Annan was travelling there was no immediate reaction from him to the new developments on the ground.

Ambassador Nasser al-Kidwa, Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations, told reporters that he has formally requested “an immediate meeting of the Security Council” to resolve the spreading crisis in the Middle East.

Al-Kidwa said he was calling for “immediate action by the Council to bring an end to the illegal military actions and the extremely dangerous situation that has developed” in the West Bank and Gaza.

Describing the Security Council inaction as “scandalous”, he said that the Council refuses to act “only when it concerns Palestinians” – implying the heavy political pressure exerted by Israel on the United States.

Last Saturday the United States abstained on a resolution which deplored “the provocation carried out at Al-Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem” where a visit by right-wing Likud leader Ariel Sharon set off riots in the occupied territories.

The original draft resolution, which called for an international commission of inquiry to probe the violence, was watered down to avoid a US veto.

The New York Times reported Monday that US President Bill Clinton had asked to delay the vote for 24 hours so he could get personally involved.

The Times quoted unnamed US officials as saying that only after the Israelis gave their blessings to an abstention – following a change in the language of the resolution – that Washington went ahead and abstained.

Holbrooke described the resolution as “biased, one-sided and unhelpful”.

“With that resolution, the Security Council effectively ended its usefulness in the Middle East crisis,” he added.

While Washington strongly supported Annan’s peace efforts, he said, any session of the Security Council will only jeopardise the Secretary- General’s mission. A Council session, he said, will not help peace in the region.

Phyllis Bennis, Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, argues that the United Nations is the right venue for resolving the Middle East crisis – it always has been.

“It is an international crisis that must be resolved by international law and the international community. The US should step back and let the UN do its job,” she says.

The request for a Council session came following the killings of two Israeli soldiers Thursday. As a result of the killings, the Israeli military deployed helicopter gunships to attack the headquarters of the Palestine Authority and other targets in the West Bank and Gaza strip.

Ali Abunimah of the Arab-American Action Network said that “it was entirely predictable that the killing of two Israeli-occupation soldiers would produce banner headlines and moral outrage of a kind that has been all but absent during two weeks of massacre of unarmed civilians by Israeli troops”.

“Israel, the occupying power, has taken military actions today tantamount to the declaration of an overall war against the entire Palestinian people, which is already under military occupation,” Al-Kidwa said.

The Israeli occupying forces, he said, have encroached on Palestinian cities, “dramatically increasing their presence in the vicinities of these cities and fired rockets from helicopter gunships and Israeli military ships to destroy several official Palestinian locations in Ramallah and near Gaza city.

“These violent, military actions have resulted in the loss of Palestinian lives and the severe destruction of property in wholly civilian areas in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” he said.

If the Security Council refuses to act, Al-Kidwa said he will have no choice but to ask for the resumption of the 10th emergency Special Session of the 189-member General Assembly so as to bring the entire issue before a wider membership of the United Nations.

The Assembly has held four rounds of an ongoing 10th emergency Special Session, beginning in 1997 through 1999, all of which focused on the situation in the occupied Israeli territories, including East Jerusalem.