U.N. Debate on Jerusalem Isolates U.S. and Israel

by Ian Williams

It was clear during the Security Council debate on the violence following the opening of the tunnel in Jerusalem that U.S. envoy to the U.N. Madeleine Albright, widely touted by her friends as the next secretary of state, was simply not on the same wavelength as the rest of the world.

She sermonized platitudinously that for the peace to be effective, "both sides must reach out to each other as real partners." She added that the world should turn its attention "not to condemnation, but toward encouraging the parties to restore the peace process and return to efforts to achieve concrete progress."

This at least had the benefit of consistency with President Bill Clinton's line of uncritical support for Israel. Of course, it was totally inconsistent with reality for the Palestinians, who, whenever they see the Israeli government reaching out to them, can rightly assume that something else is about to be stolen.

While Albright and her friends think the rest of the world is marching out of step, it is worth looking at Britain. Still laboring under the delusion of a special relationship with Washington, the U.K. is usually the most slavish follower of American positions. However, this time that did not stop British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind from calling for a moratorium on the opening of the tunnel to tourism. He also called for a meeting between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Yasser Arafat to achieve a cessation of fighting and implementation of outstanding issues under the Oslo agreement. These issues start with Hebron, and, as proposed by King Hussein of Jordan, agreement to an international commission to work out ways of dealing with the sensitive questions that arose in Jerusalem on archaeological matters.

In the end, the U.S. abstained on Resolution 1073, which called for the "immediate cessation and reversal of all acts which have resulted in the aggravation of the situation." Although it was a welcome change from the usual U.S. veto, the U.S. abstention shows how even Likud can pull the strings of U.S. diplomacy. The rest of the council were under the impression that the U.S. had approved the text, which already had been much moderated to meet American objections. Obviously most other U.N. members would have preferred a more vigorous condemnation of Israeli actions.

But then, the U.S. and Israel are operating on different principles from the rest of the world. Irish Ambassador John Campbell referred on behalf of the European Union to the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force," which is the basic premise of the U.N. charter and of international law. Under U.N. resolutions, from 1948 to the present, Jerusalem's old city is occupied territory, to be relinquished by Israel under U.N. Security Council Resolution 242. What is more, the whole city has a special status as decided in the U.N. resolutions that split Palestine, and decreed that Jerusalem would be separate from either the Jewish state or the Palestinian state that were to be created.

Voices in support of the U.S. were muted.

However, the debate was not really about the tunnel, or whether it was in, near, or under Al-Aqsa. The point resolutely missed by Ms. Albright was that the rest of the world considers that the Israeli government has no legal right to be doing any building or conducting any tourist operations in the Old City of Jerusalem.

The real point of the resolution was to bring the issue of Israel's default on its word at Oslo before the Security Council, and it took the deaths of 62 Palestinians to do it after a long time in which the U.S. has resolutely fought any effort to have the world body consider it.

At Oslo, the U.S. guaranteed an agreement that at best involved many painful sacrifices for the Palestinians. Now the U.S. is refusing to lend even rhetorical support to efforts to make the stronger party stick to its word. Instead, as Lebanese Foreign Minister Bouez pointed out, ironically, "We, the aggressed, were asked to give security guarantees to the aggressor," and were being asked to give assurances to "the State with one of the largest nuclear arsenals in the world."

As speaker after speaker reiterated, the real issue was the Israeli Likud government's "four noes," as Lebanese Foreign Minister Fares Bouez called them in the General Assembly the week before the Security Council resolution. "No to the withdrawal from the occupied Syrian Golan, no to withdrawal from the occupied West Bank, no to the settlement of the question of Jerusalem, and no to the realization of the Palestinian people's inalienable right to establish their State."

One must spring to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's defense. His behavior has not been that different from Peres or Rabin before. He has simply explicitly declared what they were already doing with less publicity. It was a Labor government that expanded settlements, broke the deadline on withdrawal from Hebron. Indeed, while Peres talked cautiously about withdrawal, it was he who made 200,000 homeless and killed more than 100 refugees in the Qana U.N. camp in South Lebanon as part of his election campaign. Netanyahu is manifestly no angel, but we should be circumspect about dishing out inappropriate haloes to his opponents.

The U.S. Campaign Against Boutros-Ghali

The U.S. campaign against U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, which was at the very least initiated by his refusal to hide the report about the Israeli shelling of the Lebanese refugees, is meeting similar incomprehension. Speaker after speaker at the General Assembly called for his reappointment, while voices in support of the U.S. position were muted.

The process either of reappointment or replacement has to begin soon, and the U.S. is as isolated on the issue as it is on most things to do with the Middle East. Deadlock is looming as even Washington's best friends get annoyed at foreign policy positions determined by domestic lobbies. In fact the whole affair has been so bungled as to make American diplomacy seem like an oxymoron.

Despite a full court press through Africa, the State Department's teams have yet to unearth a single credible candidate to rival Boutros-Ghali. Any suggestion made by the U.S. would draw an almost automatic veto from at least one of the other permanent members.

Prophecy is always a temperamental gift, but taking into account the U.S. Mission's ineptitude, Bill Clinton's talent for pre-emptive capitulation, and the annoyance of the rest of the world, I would hazard that the Egyptian diplomat will still be in office in the new year—if not for a full term, at least for a substantial part of it.