Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 1997, Pages 32, 76

United Nations Report

Plain Talk From General Assembly's Special Report on Israel's Jews-Only Settlement

By Ian Williams

During the previous Likud Party administration, under Yitzhak Shamir, Israel treated the U.N. as Arab-occupied territory. Its churlishness was made most manifest when the whole Israeli delegation stayed away from the 1991 meeting at which George Bush achieved the overthrow of the 1974 "Zionism is Racism Resolution," pleading the feast of Succoth as an excuse for their absence. It has to be said that that was as much a gesture against President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker, then engaged in some heavy-duty arm twisting with Shamir, as it was toward the U.N.

However, while Likud does not care a fig what the rest of the world thinks, the more internationally minded Labor Party does sometimes take the U.N. seriously. So long, that is, as the U.N. does what it's told, since even Labor Party diplomats seem firmly convinced that when the U.S. and Israel stand against the other 183 countries in the world, it is the rest of the world that is mistaken.

That attitude was very evident in the maiden speech of Likud Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's new envoy to the U.N., Dore Gold, who arrived in time to speak at the U.N. General Assembly's special session on settlements on July 15. The resumed session was called to consider the U.N. report that the previous General Assembly session in April had commissioned. That, in turn, had been called to circumvent the U.S. veto in the Security Council, under the Uniting For Peace procedure originally designed by the U.S. to bypass nyet-saying Soviets.

By now the U.S. delegation must be wondering whether it would not have been better to abstain in the Security Council on the original fairly anodyne resolution rather than suffer this war of diplomatic attrition in which their Israeli client's amoral obtuseness continually reinforces world support for incrementally tougher resolutions.

Gold's arrival is unlikely to do much to ease their plight. Netanyahu had tapped Gold to be ambassador to the U.N. from his previous job with the Jaffee Research Institute in Tel Aviv, a nationalist think tank much quoted in Israel lobby circles. Symbolizing the interchangeability between U.S. Middle East policymakers and the Israelis with whom they "negotiate," Gold had to relinquish his American passport to become Israel's ambassador in New York, thereby balancing the reverse act of Martin Indyk, who had to assume a U.S. passport before becoming America's ambassador in Tel Aviv.

Gold's intemperate speech did little to change minds about Likud's mere "urban housing project," at Jabal Abu Ghneim, as Gold called it. He launched blunt threats in the direction of the U.N. agencies working in Palestine for providing information for the report, requested by the 185-member General Assembly, saying that "it...threatened to harm the cooperation between host states and the U.N. agencies which is essential to their effective functioning."

The report also catalogues the apartheid-style discrimination against "non-Jews."

He has reason to be upset about the report, which was acclaimed by the Palestinians as "one of the strongest such documents to come from the U.N." It was compiled by the new under secretary for political affairs, Kieran Prendergast, a former British diplomat, who has made no secret of his scorn at Likud's attempts to refuse cooperation.

The report is indeed much more readable than the average U.N. document, pulling no punches as it takes Israel to task for a wide range of illegal policies. Of course, only in the U.S. does stating the obvious on this subject seem astonishing. But it is refreshing to read an official document that declares that Gold's "urban housing project" would be the final link in the chain of settlements that would isolate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, and would have a devastating effect on the West Bank economy. Prendergast also pointed out that foreign companies and private individuals have assisted in this illegality. He noted in particular that the American Days Inn hotel chain had opened a franchise in Gush Katif settlement in Gaza.

The report also catalogues the apartheid-style legal discrimination brought to bear against the Palestinians or, in the words of the report, "non-Jews," who have managed to hang on in East Jerusalem. The report goes on to detail the many ways the Israelis have broken the Oslo agreements. This included restricting freedom of movement between different Palestinian zones in the West Bank and between the West Bank and Gaza, and also between all of the Israeli-occupied territories and the outside world.

Torture Continues

"In all, more than 3,000 Palestinians are said to remain in Israeli prisons," the report continues, and "300 of them without charge or trial." They continue to be subject "to torture and mistreatment, under security regulations officially endorsed by the High Court of Israel in spite of recent condemnation by the U.N. Committee against Torture."

Unhelped by Gold's insults or U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson' pleas, only the U.S., Israel and, to the delight of some Arab ambassadors, the minute Federated States of Micronesia voted against the resolution. It's true that Russia was one of the abstentions, but Gold's attempts to claim that as a personal victory were put in perspective by Palestine's Nasser Al Kidwa, who offered the more credible explanation that "Madeleine Albright has just been in Moscow, and the only question is what she offered in return [for Russia's absention]." To balance that, Norway, Germany and Canada, which abstained last time, now joined the 131 nations voting for the resolution, after some tinkering with the text that slightly softened the implied threat to Israel's voting rights in the General Assembly.

The General Assembly resolution itself represents a strengthening of the various elements of its predecessor resolution passed three months earlier. The U.N. members overwhelmingly condemned Israel for its failure to cooperate with the special envoy, and, following the report's sections on the administrative harassment of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the resolution has expanded from its previous focus on settlement activity to call upon Israel to reverse all of its illegal actions against East Jerusalemites.

The resolution also called on member states to stop any support for Israeli settlements by companies or individuals, and for a ban on imports of any goods produced in settlements, including in Jerusalem. It goes on to ask the secretary-general to host a conference of the high contracting parties of the Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilians on how to enforce the convention, which is so egregiously being broken by Israeli actions in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

"In a sense we passed a threshold. We are now in the framework of collective measures" says El Kidwa of the incremental approach, looking with relish at the potential of the paragraph that demands that Israel provide details of the goods produced in the settlements.

Another visitor to the U.N. in July was former Secretary of State Jim Baker, who seems to be achieving the impossible over Western Sahara. The talks he has brokered between Morocco and Polisario are continuing, and he reported progress and compromises on both sides, with new sessions to be held in August. While cautiously avoiding premature triumph, he has clearly made more progress than any other mediator.

If the White House seriously wanted a settlement in the Middle East, perhaps it should sic the tough-talking Texan onto Likud. He certainly produced results last time, primarily by bringing down the Likud government of Yitzhak Shamir and making it possible for Israeli voters to replace it with the Labor government of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.

The "peace process" was born on Baker's watch, and its death has taken place under Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright. And, once again, there's no chance that it will be resuscitated so long as Likud remains in power.