Israeli Settlement Plan Isolates U.S. In Security Council, General Assembly

by Ian Williams

Back in the 1950s, frustrated by unreasonable Soviet vetoes, the U.S. and its allies pioneered a procedure they called “Uniting for Peace.” It allowed issues blocked by a Security Council veto to be taken to the General Assembly, thus thwarting the U.N. Charter that explicitly bars the Assembly from discussing matters that the Council is dealing with.

Hence the ironic grin on the face of Nasser Al-Kidwa, the Palestinian representative to the U.N., when he told the Security Council, following the 71st U.S. veto, that he was taking the issue of Israeli construction in East Jerusalem to the General Assembly. Since all of the other 14 members had voted for a resolution condemning the Israeli violations of the Geneva Conventions, and since America’s closest European allies, Britain, Sweden, France and Portugal, had actually sponsored the resolution, El-Kidwa knew that once again the U.S. and Israel would stand condemned in the dock of world opinion.

Still in his early days, and still probably hoping against hope to get the U.S. to pay up on its $1.5 billion arrears, new United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan was circumspect in his response. He mildly echoed U.S. criticisms of the building of the settlement by describing it as “unhelpful,” but did not express any opinion on the legality or otherwise of proposed construction.

Interestingly, while losing the public relations battle, the Israelis have scored points on the linguistic front. Annan, and many Western diplomats, referred to the Hebrew name for the housing project, Har Homa, rather than the Palestinian name, Jabal Abu Ghneim. However, while they may have taken the name, there were no takers for the substantive Israeli arguments not even from the U.S., for whose diplomacy it was yet another sad day.

Madeleine Albright tended to look smugly self-satisfied when she cast a veto on Israel’s behalf. By contrast, her successor, Bill Richardson, looked a little uncomfortable reciting the tired mantra of the Clinton administration that “We have never believed, despite the useful role the Council can and has played in working for Middle East Peace, that it is an appropriate forum for debating the issues now under negotiation between the parties....Furthermore, this resolution makes sweeping statements concerning the legal status of Israeli settlements which the parties themselves have agreed are to be treated as a permanent status issue in the talks that are about to resume.”

The resolution firmly restated the illegality of settlements.

Of course Ambassador Richardson was well aware that President Bill Clinton had unilaterally changed the long-standing U.S. policy on the status of settlements and Jerusalem, while the rest of the world had kept to the old positions expressed by the U.N. That is why the resolution moved by the Western Europeans, although mild in some ways, firmly restated the illegality of settlements, and of all the Israeli measures that are designed to change the status of the occupied territories, including Jerusalem.

Indeed The Netherlands’ ambassador, on behalf of the European Union and 11 other states, all friends of the U.S., reaffirmed that “East Jerusalem is not under Israeli sovereignty.” It was clear that no one, not even the Americans, believed the Israeli explanation that the “approval of building plans within Jerusalem does not constitute a change in the status of Jerusalem,” or that “the project is an essential part of a comprehensive municipal plan to construct 20,000 new housing units for the city’s Jewish residents and 8,500 for the city’s Arab residentsa ratio comparable to that of the Jewish and Arab populations in the city.” No diplomats held their breath waiting for announcements of Arab housing construction in West Jersualem!

The British envoy, Sir John Weston, eloquently defended the one position on which London breaks its usual slavish mimicking of Washington. “The issue of settlements has become central to the whole Middle East peace process, and settlement activity damages that process. Not only did it violate the spirit of the Oslo accords and the Hebron agreement, but it established facts on the ground that prejudged the final status negotiations. The United Kingdom could not condone actions that unashamedly changed the status of Jerusalem ahead of those negotiations,” he explained.

Commending Palestinian restraint in the face of such provocation, the British representative continued, “Israel must bear the consequences of its decision to proceed with the construction of new settlements in East Jerusalem. The Council could not ignore that dangerous turn of events.”

Of course that has been the whole point of Israeli policyto separate the legal principle from its desired end of forcing Palestinian surrender to Israeli military strength. That was the position introduced and defended obdurately by Madeleine Albright as soon as she arrived as U.N. ambassador four years ago.

Just how isolated that position is was demonstrated less than a week later on March 13, when the entire U.N. General Assembly passed the same resolution as vetoed in the Council—with only the U.S. and Israel against. While the whole European Union and the Arab group sponsored the resolution, Washington’s somewhat devalued diplomatic clout scored a very minor triumph. Two countries, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands, abstained. Both are former U.S. trusteeship territories, who are treaty-bound to consult with the U.S. on foreign affairs, and totally dependent on Washington financially.

Readers of this column may have noticed that it did not join the tidal wave of hagiography that greeted Madeleine Albright’s apotheosis from U.N. ambassador to secretary of state. Many at the U.N. were surprised at the “revelation” that she had Jewish antecedents. They were not surprised at the fact, which they had assumed was well known, but at her professed surprise when confronted with the news.

The Israelis knew. Henry Kissinger knew. The Czech diplomatic corps, her cousin and family, and the mayor of her home town all knew, and that had percolated through the U.N. And no one thought too much of it. After all, the lesson of American politics is that you don’t have to be Jewish to be anti-Arab, while many American Jews have been brave defenders of Palestinian rights. But her denial reinforced the suspicions that she was not the best candidate. She either had to be very ignorant and somewhat incurious about the significance of her grandparents’ disappearance during the Nazi occupation of her homeland, or she had serious psychological problems with admitting to her Jewish roots. Or she was lying through her teeth.

Interestingly, The Washington Post reported that the Israelis did not go public to claim her because they felt that she might have had to bend a little from her unwavering support for Israel in compensation. In fact, for all her faults, she does have unwavering loyaltyto her own career and the man who made that possible, Bill Clinton, whose support for Israel has been the one fixed pillar in a career otherwise marked with the flexibility of a circus acrobat.

However, she should beware. The debacle over her origins makes her much easier to throw overboard when the Clinton administration needs a scapegoat, and there will be plenty of need for whole flocks of them in an administration where foreign policy comes with a night in the Lincoln bedroom as a bonus to major contributors.

One can only hope that Richardson, a man with a distinguished political career in his own right, and seemingly decent, affable and far more diplomatic than his predecessor, will force some input into the foreign policy debate. He shook more hands on his first day in the U.N. than Madeleine Albright had in four years, and went to see the chairman of the Non-Aligned group in his first week. By contrast, Albright had not in her entire “diplomatic” career seen the representative of the largest voting bloc in the U.N.

As we went to press, Kofi Annan had offered former Bush administration Secretary of State Jim Baker the job of special representative for MINURSO, the $60 million a year stalemated operation in the Western Sahara. Baker reportedly is interested, and it awaits the administration’s sign-off. Held up for seven years now, mostly by Moroccan footdragging, the operation needs someone with Baker’s obvious talent for tough arm-twisting if it is to succeed. It may yet begin to move, and the long delayed referendum may take place before all the Saharwi voters die of old age.

“Dad-deeee,” Ibrahim cried out, as I was dragged out of my home.

I saw my neighbors’ faces peering from behind doors. I looked directly into their eyes. They were filled with sympathy. They too didn’t believe what was happening.

“We’ll take care of Ibrahim, don’t worry,” my Chinese next-door neighbor said.

Outside, tense, battle-ready uniformed police, anticipating confrontation, blocked the street in both directions. A helicopter hovered overhead. I struggled to retain reality, even as it dissolved into images and sounds buried in my innermost depths: a refugee camp near Birzeit, my home village in the West Bank, the soldiers, the helicopter, the prisoner, the neighbors, the early morning raid, the fog. It all fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, only this time it was happening on the American West Coast, not the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

I was taken to police headquarters, Parker Center in downtown Los Angeles. There I learned I wasn’t the only person detained that morning in simultaneous Dirty-Harry-style dawn raids. With a final arrest a week later, we became the “L.A. 8.” Deemed dangerous, we were detained for 23 days in a maximum security prison like violent criminals. We were charged under a McCarthy-era law, the McCarran-Walter Act, with supporting a terrorist organization.

By now, 10 years later, 10,000 pages of material have been submitted by the government. But in court Judge Stephen Wilson has confirmed our innocence, noting that the evidence indicated that “the plaintiffs had done nothing illegal.”

Four sets of laws were used in this case. All have been declared unconstitutional, but the government keeps coming back. The latest attempt, on Jan. 13, 1997, involved a new law, The Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act. How many more laws to go? Not even the prescient Judge Wilson seemed to have a clue when he termed the case the “Never-Ending Saga.”

The toll on our lives is multiplying. The Los Angeles Eight are multiplying. At the time of the arrest I was the only defendant married with a family. Today each of the Eight has one. But none of us can have a normal family life. The bureaucrats are continuing to make sure of that. They seem to enjoy spending tax dollars for political witch hunts and destroying people’s lives for their political zeal, as attested by the 10,000 pages of meaningless material.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) designated ours as the “Civil Liberties Case of the ’80s,” a distinction that still endures in the ’90s. Our attorneys say it will run right on into the 21st century. Perhaps it is an indication, a test case, of what is awaiting immigrants in the next millenium.

Certainly freedom can never be taken for granted. Perhaps President Clinton will do better in the realm of justice in his second term. But what is not a maybe is the fact that we are determined to see this case through even into the 21st century, to show we have done nothing wrong and that we are being persecuted for nothing but our thoughts.

I’m haunted by a remark made when, at one point in the case, I noted that the agents made a significant mistake during my arrest. They hadn’t read me my rights.

Someone then pointed out that instead of a mistake being committed, “maybe immigrants don’t have rights.” So far that seems to be true. But the overwhelming public support we have received over the past decade proves that this nation of immigrants would not tolerate this kind of oppression to go on.

I conclude by citing a recent New York Times article (Feb. 17, 1997) addressing the case by columnist Anthony Lewis, entitled: “Enough Is Enough.” He writes: “Our constitutional freedom depends on not allowing the government to break the rules when it moves against unpopular individuals or interests. It is time for Attorney General Janet Reno to end this outrageous case. Enough is Enough.”