UN Resolutions

By Donald Neff

Now that the Palestinians have presumably accepted UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, it is fair to ask which of the United Nations' resolutions on the Middle East Israel is ready to accept. Will it accept the Security Council's and the General Assembly's demands that it not claim all of Jerusalem as its capital? Or that it allow the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes? Or that it withdraw from the territories it occupied by armed force in 1967 and continues to hold by force? Will it honor the Geneva Convention; acknowledge the Palestinians' right of self-determination; grant to them the human rights enshrined in the UN Charter; allow them political freedom, economic independence, and the right of political assembly, free speech, and an uncensored press? Will it even make the pitiful gesture of permitting the Palestinians to found a university in Jerusalem? Will Israel stop the blowing up of Palestinian houses, the forceful deportations of Palestinians, the imprisonment without trial, and the torture of Palestinians? Will it put its nuclear program under international safeguards, or stop attacking its neighbors, or halt its relations with the maverick racist state of South Africa?

All of these demands have been made in UN resolutions aimed at Israel over the past 40 years. Nearly 300 resolutions have been passed by the Security Council and the General Assembly affecting Israel, usually in a condemnatory sense, and Israel's response has been to turn its back on them all. It has defied the United Nations; slandered its motives; spurned its advice; ignored its censures and condemnations; and disregarded its demands, requests, calls, and pleas for the granting of human rights to an entire group.

The list of UN resolutions passed and rejected by Israel over the years makes doleful, pathetic reading.

General Assembly Resolutions

General Assembly Resolution 194, passed Dec. 11, 1948, called on Israel to show a humanitarian regard for the 726,000 Palestinian refugees created during the fighting in 1947 and 1948, and allow them to return to their homes inside Israel. The resolution also said Jerusalem was holy to three religions and should come under an international regime. The assembly and the Security Council repeated these pleas over the next four decades, without result.

The General Assembly in particular has focused on the plight of the Palestinians and passed numerous resolutions aimed at guaranteeing their rights. Israel has ignored them all. Resolution 2546 (XXIV), passed Dec. 11, 1969, called on Israel to comply with the Geneva Convention and stop its repressive policies toward the occupied population. Resolution 2792 D and E (XXVI), Dec. 6, 1971, reaffirmed the inalienable rights of the Palestinians and called on Israel to allow the return of "displaced inhabitants" and to stop destroying Palestinian homes.

Resolution 3092 A and B (XXVIII), passed Dec. 7, 1973, again called on Israel to respect the Geneva Convention and "declares that Israel's policy of annexation, establishment of settlements, and transfer of an alien population to the occupied territories is in contravention of the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations ... and the basic human rights and fundamental freedoms of the people, as well as an impediment to the establishment of a just and lasting peace."

Resolution 31/61, passed Dec. 9, 1976, "requests once again all states to desist from supplying Israel with military and other forms of aid or any assistance which would enable it to consolidate its occupation or to exploit the natural resources of the occupied territories."

As the years passed without any concessions by Israel, the General Assembly's resolutions became blunter. Resolution 36/147 C, passed Dec. 16, 1981, declared that "Israel's grave breaches of the Geneva Convention are war crimes and an affront to humanity." Resolution ES-74, April 28, 1982, again called on the Security Council to recognize the inalienable rights of the Palestinians and condemned Israel, describing it as "not a peace-loving member state (of the UN) and that it has carried out neither its obligations under the Charter nor its commitment under General Assembly Resolution 273 (111) of May 1949 (Israel's admission to the UN, when it pledged to abide by the Charter.)"

Last Nov. 3, the UN General Assembly voted 130 to 2 to condemn Israel's suppression of the Palestinian uprising; the United States and Israel cast the only two opposition votes while 16 other countries, including Britain and Canada, abstained. The resolution strongly condemned Israel for "killing and wounding defenseless Palestinians." The US representative, Herbert S. Okun, said the United States opposed the resolution because its "harsh rhetoric" could only "inflame an already embittered situation, making it more difficult to proceed toward a negotiated settlement."

Security Council Resolutions

During the same period, the Security Council, where the United States held ultimate power with its veto, passed 43 resolutions condemning Israel; it would have passed 23 others but the United Stated employed its once rarely used veto to protect its closest ally in the eastern Mediterranean. Among the more significant Security Council resolutions that Israel has disdained:

Resolution 252, passed May 21, 1968, by a vote of 13-0 with two abstentions, declared as invalid Israel's administrative unification of the Jordanian and Israeli sectors of Jerusalem. The United States and Canada abstained.
Resolution 267, unanimously passed July 3, 1969, "censures in the strongest terms" Israel's measures to change the status of Jerusalem, deplored "the failure of Israel to show any regard for the resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council," and declared all such measures "invalid."
Resolution 446, passed March 22, 1979, deplored Israel's establishment of settlements on occupied territories as "a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just, and lasting peace." The vote was 12-0 with the United States, Britain, and Norway abstaining.
Resolution 469, passed May 20, 1980, "strongly" deplored Israel's violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention in its expulsions of the mayors of Hebron and Halhul and a judge from Hebron. The vote was 14-0 with the United States abstaining.

Nearly 300 resolutions have been passed by the Security Council and the General Assembly affecting Israel and Israel's response has been to turn its back on them all.

Resolution 478, passed Aug. 20, 1980, censured Israel for annexing Jerusalem on July 30, declared the action "null and void," and called on the few countries maintaining embassies in Jerusalem to move them to Tel Aviv where the United States and most other nations had their legations. The United States abstained in the 14-0 vote.
Resolutions 487 and 497, unanimously passed June 19 and December 17, 1981, "strongly" condemned Israel's June 7 air raid on Iraq's nuclear facility at Baghdad and condemned Israel's Dec. 14 annexation of Syria's Golan Heights, captured in 1967.
Resolution 515, passed July 29, 1982, demanded that Israel lift its siege of Beirut and allow the distribution of supplies to the civilian population. Resolution 517, passed six days later on Aug. 4, 1982, censured Israel for refusing to lift its siege of Beirut to allow supplies to civilians. The vote was 14-0 for both resolutions, with the United States abstaining.

Resolutions Concerning the Intifadah

Finally, the Security Council has also been busy during the uprising in the occupied territories. Even the United States acquiesced in some of the condemnations as a result of Israel's extraordinarily brutal behavior. Thus when the council passed on Dec. 22, 1987, Resolution 605 to "strongly deplore" Israel's "policies and practices which violate the human rights of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories," the United States abstained. On Jan.5, 1988, the Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 607 calling on Israel to refrain from carrying out its plans, announced Jan.3, to deport nine Palestinians and also reaffirmed "once again" that Palestinians in the occupied territories are protected by the Geneva Convention. And on Jan. 14, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 608 expressing "deep regret that Israel, the occupying power, has, in defiance of that resolution, deported Palestinian civilians." The vote was 14-0 with the United States abstaining.

The United States also vetoed two other 1988 resolutions highly critical of Israel. On Feb. 1, a council resolution called on Israel to abandon its policies against the uprising that violate the rights of occupied Palestinians and to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention. That resolution also formalized a leading role for the United Nations in future peace negotiations, but the United States vetoed it. On April 15, the United States vetoed another resolution urging Israel to accept deported Palestinians, condemning Israel's shooting of civilians, calling on Israel to uphold the Fourth Geneva Convention, and calling for a peace settlement under UN auspices.

The final irony is that while the Palestinians have been relentlessly pressured to accept unequivocally UN Security Council Resolution 242, Israel has paid lip service to 242 but never actually embraced it.

The final irony in this tawdry history is the fact that while the Palestinians have been relentlessly pressured to accept unequivocally UN Security Council Resolution 242, the reality is that Israel has paid lip service to 242 but never actually embraced it. The resolution specifically calls for "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent (1967) conflict." But Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has not been reticent in declaring publicly that there will never be any withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza. That hardly jibes with the resolution's clear language—no matter how much quibbling Israel indulges in about the absence of the word "the" in the English-language version of the resolution's call for Israel to withdraw from "territories occupied" in the 1967 war in exchange for peace with its Arab neighbors. The resolution plainly calls for withdrawal, and this Shamir refuses even to discuss.

Obviously, it is not the Palestinians but Israelis who are out of step with the world community. Thus the first diplomatic effort in George Bush's new administration should be focused on having both sides clearly and without qualification accept Resolution 242. Then, perhaps, an effort could be made to see that Israel, as well as the Palestinians, respects world opinion and embraces the rest of the United Nations' resolutions. Only then is talk of peace likely to he meaningful.

Donald Neff's latest book, Warriors Against Israel, has just been published by Amana Books of Brattleboro, VT Available from the AET Book Club , it is the concluding volume in his Warriors trilogy on US-Israeli affairs 1956-73.