It’s Ostracism Time for U.S., Israel at United Nations

By Ian Williams

With the opening of the General Assembly every September comes the beginning of the hunting season, when Nasser El Kidwa, the Palestinian ambassador to the U.N., begins persecuting poor little Israel. At least that’s the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s version of events. In fact, the Israelis maintain that the Palestinians and the Arabs are in breach of the Oslo accords by raising the subject of the resolutions that Israel regularly ignores.

For his part, David Levy, Israel’s new foreign minister, has promised Israelis that he will raise the subject of “anti-Israeli” resolutions with all the foreign leaders he meets. We have no reason to doubt that he has done so, but we have every reason to doubt that he will be successful, for the simple reason that his government is continuing the illegal practices against which the resolutions are directed.

When he came to New York to address the United Nations, Levy showed exactly what the problem is when he declared that “United Jerusalem...under the sovereignty of Israel, remains and will remain forever the capital of the State of Israel.” So it is all right for him and his government to lay claim to occupied territory and declare their intention of holding on to it in the face of international law and international opinion. However, it is a provocative anticipation of the outcome of bilateral negotiations for the Palestinians to restate international law on matters like settlements and the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to the occupied territories.

No wonder Nasser El Kidwa expects all the usual resolutions to be passed this year, and the lone negative votes of the U.S. and Israel to highlight, once again, just how isolated the two countries have become.

However, there may well be some success in another Israeli diplomatic endeavor—getting admission to a regional group at the United Nations. You may have seen full-page advertisements in The New York Times and in the weekly Jewish newspapers lamenting the fact that Israel alone of the 188 member states cannot be on the Security Council.

The temporary seats on the council are elected on the basis of region, and, for fairly obvious reasons, the Asian regional group has not been eager to take in Israel. Israel and its supporters in the U.S. have been urging the “West European and Others Group,” to accept Israel, but so far Israel’s approaches have been blackballed by the European states. On the one hand the Europeans are well aware of Israel’s recidivist resolution-breaking record, and on the other hand, the Europeans do not want to jeopardize their own ties to the Arab and Muslim world. However, because “WEOG” includes New Zealand, Australia and Canada, they have not been able to plead Israel’s geographical position as an excuse.

Israel alone of the 188 member states cannot be on the Security Council.

This time, with the U.S. and Germany pushing hard, it seems that there may be some kind of deal to give Israel temporary membership. Some of the former opponents feel that Barak’s government should be rewarded for restarting the peace talks, and see the WEOG membership as a suitable return.

However, that does not mean that Israel is going to join the Security Council any time soon. Many of the regional groups rotate positions without elections, but WEOG usually has contested elections, and for the Security Council the vote is of the whole General Assembly. Israel, unless it seriously transforms its practices and demeanor, is about as likely to win a seat on the Security Council as it is to elect an Arab as prime minister. For example, Turkey is a candidate next year for a temporary “WEOG” seat on the Council, but many observers suggest that the Turkish-Israeli alliance will cost it dearly in votes.

Ironically, of course, while Israel wants to be inside the U.N. it wants to keep the organization completely outside the peace process, precisely because of all those resolutions that it refuses to honor, beginning with the one upon which its acceptance into U.N. membership was conditioned—allowing the refugees to return.

Sanctions

Meanwhile the other resolution-breaker, Iraq, has now managed almost a year without the arms inspectors of UNSCOM. However, the feat is a costly one for the Iraqi people, who are still suffering from sanctions which are increasingly unpopular with all member states except the U.S. and UK, and even the British are looking more and more uncomfortable with the human cost. During the General Assembly, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine accused the Americans of insensitivity to the humanitarian situation of the Iraqis and denounced the embargo as “a primitive approach and very cruel to Iraqi society.”

Lobbying hard for the ending of sanctions, he declared that Iraq was not presently a threat, but that without monitoring it soon would be. France is one of the holdouts on an Anglo-Dutch resolution that now has some 10 co-sponsors. The British seem to be trying to emulate their feat on Libyan sanctions by pulling over the Americans as far as they can.

In fact, there has been a discreet American climbdown in that the U.S. accepts that if Iraq complies, then sanctions will be lifted. In the past, the line has been that, in effect, sanctions stay until Saddam Hussain goes. However, the gap with the French, Russians and Chinese remains. Interestingly, all the Security Council members are unanimous that Iraq should be disarmed. Even Saddam Hussain’s best friends don’t trust him with missiles, or chemical and biological weapons. Broadly, the division is whether he can be trusted to allow monitoring or inspection after sanctions are lifted.

The British and Dutch are quietly confident that in the end they will win the waverers over, once they realize that Washington will not budge any further, and that there is no other possibility for ending the sanctions regime. That leaves only one small problem: winning the agreement of an Iraqi government that is almost as insouciant about its own people’s suffering as the U.S. secretary of state.

While there may be some division over lifting Iraqi sanctions, there was none whatsoever over the imposition of sanctions on the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” a.k.a. the Taliban. Even though the Taliban control most of Afghanistan, the U.N. has not recognized Taliban representatives, and it is the former government, long ago driven from Kabul, whose ambassador still represents Afghanistan in the U.N. And even he supported the imposition of financial sanctions and an air travel boycott against the Taliban.

Inspired by Washington but fervently supported by Moscow and Beijing in a rare display of unity, the Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1267 on Oct. 15, demanding that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden, the alleged architect of the bombing of U.S. embassies, by Nov. 14. No one tried to move a sunset clause for the sanctions, thus repeating what many would consider the mistake made when Libyan and Iraqi sanctions were imposed. The one lesson learned was to allow exceptions to the flight ban for humanitarian purposes and for the hajj.

Not content with a resolution, the following week Sergei Lavrov, Russian ambassador and president of the Security Council, delivered a presidential statement that also took the Taliban to task for its abuse of human rights, treatment of women, use of child soldiers, assault on the Iranian consulate, and opium production.

It was a touching display of concern for human rights, not least since the Russians and Chinese, over Kosovo for example, were at pains to stress that Milosevic’s abuse of the human rights of Albanians was purely an internal matter. Cynics might assume that this sudden and unanimous outpouring of sympathy for the plight of ordinary Afghans had a lot to do with their shared perception of the threat of Islamic fundamentalism on their southern borders. And of course, the cynics would be right, as they so often are about votes on the Security Council.

Ian Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations and the author of The U.N. for Beginners, available from the AET Book Club.