US Vetoes Another UN Resolution Against Israel (This One On Arafat)

US vetoes UN Arafat resolution


The United States has vetoed a draft resolution at the UN Security Council denouncing Israel's decision to "remove" the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.
US Ambassador to the UN John Negroponte said the resolution was "flawed" because it did not include a "robust condemnation of acts of terrorism".

The draft resolution, backed by Arab states, demanded that Israel "desist from any act of deportation and cease any threat to the safety of the elected president of the Palestinian Authority".

It followed a statement by Israel's security cabinet last week denouncing Mr Arafat as an "obstacle to peace" and saying he should be removed - although the cabinet did not say how or when it would do so.

And at the weekend Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert added that his government had not ruled out killing Mr Arafat.

BBC United Nations correspondent Greg Barrow says efforts to bridge differences between opposing sides came to nought, leaving diplomats to mull over the repeated failures of the Security Council to make a useful intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


Toned down

During a harsh debate at the UN, more than 40 governments condemned the Israeli position.


I hope that Israel will not interpret the resolution as a licence to kill President Arafat
Saeb Erekat
Palestinian negotiator
Israeli ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman on Monday denounced the Palestinian leader as a "professional terrorist", prompting the Palestinian representative to walk out of the session.
The resolution put to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, which was sponsored by Syria, demanded that Israel would not harm or deport Mr Arafat.

Syria modified some of the resolution's language in an attempt to broaden support for the measure and avoid a US veto.

It added a phrase expressing "grave concern" at the recent rise in violence and condemning both suicide bombings and Israel's targeted assassinations of Palestinian militants for causing "enormous suffering and many innocent victims".

But Ambassador Negroponte said the resolution should have explicitly condemned militant groups including Hamas and the al-Aqsa brigades.


Loan guarantees

The US was the only one of the 15 countries on the Security Council to oppose the resolution.


ARAFAT'S TRAVELS
1957: Left Egypt for Kuwait, after graduating
1968: To Jordan, directed raids into Israel
1970: Forced from Jordan and moved to Lebanon
1982: Left Lebanon following Israeli invasion
1982-94: Mainly based in Tunis with PLO leaders
1993: Signed Oslo Accords in Washington
1994: To Gaza, to set up Palestinian Authority
2001-03: Confined to his Ramallah HQ


Eleven other members approved the text, while Britain, Germany and Bulgaria abstained.
Commenting on the vote, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters news agency he hoped Israel would not use the US veto as a "licence to kill".

Meanwhile in Washington, the US administration said it would reduce loan guarantees to Israel for expanding Jewish settlements on the West Bank.

Under US law, the guarantees may support only activities in areas Israel held before the 1967 war, State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said.

And, he said, the settlement construction is inconsistent with objectives and understandings between the US and Israel.

Mr Powell is to decide how much of the $9bn in guarantees will be withheld.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/3114494.stm

Published: 2003/09/16 22:39:59 GMT




Edit: The On-Air BBC Report quoted several UN representatives voicing anger and frustration with America's continuing pattern of repeatedly using it's veto to block any attempts to call Israel to task about it's part in the conflict in the Middle East. Officials were quoted as saying " The US has once again shown that it has no interest in a genuine peace process, but merely supports it's interests." Another said that the US " has obviously no impartiality on this issue."

 

What's ironic, and hypocritical, was that it was France and Russia's use of the veto...despite the fact that it reflected the vast majority of their populations...on Iraq which the White House used to suggest bias, corruption, and call the UN irrelevant. Even further, the US has repeatedly shown extreme bias when using the veto to protect Israel, and France, Germany and Russia have all voted against Iraq in the past. Who is biased, corrupt, or making the UN irrelevant?


Edit: Another quote from the BBC from a UN official: " If the peace process in the region is ever going to see any real progress the US is going to have to deal with this...or at least let us deal with this in a more egalitarian manner."


And thanks for the heads-up, SJC.

 

Another point...re: the supposed knee-jerk anti-Bush slant of CNN...the veto and the angry reaction to it is the lead story on the BBC, and on Canadian stations...but I have yet to even see CNN mention it.

 

Found the CNN report on this on-line.



UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The United States vetoed a U.N. resolution Tuesday that would have demanded Israel halt threats to expel Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

Eleven of the 15 Security Council members voted for the resolution, and three members -- Britain, Bulgaria and Germany -- abstained. The U.S. veto killed the resolution.

In the Middle East, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said: "This is a sad day for the United Nations. I hope the U.S. veto will not be interpreted by Israel as a license to kill Yasser Arafat."

The Israeli security Cabinet decided in principle last week to remove Arafat, calling him an obstacle to peace, but it provided no specifics about possible action.

International criticism escalated Sunday following Israeli Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's remark that killing Arafat was an option. Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom backtracked Monday, saying that was not official policy.

The Arab League -- which proposed the U.N. resolution through Security Council member Syria -- called Israel's actions the equivalent of a declaration of war on Middle East peace.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government blames Arafat for not stopping terrorist attacks that have killed dozens of Israelis in recent weeks. Arafat remains confined to his compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah, surrounded by supporters.

Nasser al-Kidwa, chief of the Palestinian observer mission at the United Nations, warned that "serious consequences may follow the use of this veto, and the United states will bear the consequences for that," The Associated Press reported.

After the vote, U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte reiterated the American position that the resolution lacked balance.

"As we said yesterday, we will not support any resolution that evades the explicit threat to [the] Middle East peace process posed by Hamas and other such terrorist groups," Negroponte said.

Negroponte said U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has made it clear that he does not support the "elimination of Mr. Arafat or his forced exile."

"While Mr. Arafat is part of the problem, we believe this problem is best solved through diplomatic isolation, and we have made this view clear," he said.

The rejected resolution would have demanded "that Israel, the occupying power, desist from any act of deportation and cease any threat to the safety of the elected president of the Palestinian Authority."

It would have called for the cessation of "all acts of terrorism, provocation, incitement and destruction."

It also would have condemned both Israel's attacks on militant leaders and Palestinian suicide bombings, "all of which caused enormous suffering and many innocent victims."

"The fact that the U.S. delegation used its veto is something extremely regrettable," said Fayssal Mekdad, Syria's U.N. ambassador.

"If Israel wants to live in peace in the region, and it's clear it doesn't want to live in peace in the region, it wants to live with its expansion, with its settlements, with its occupation, something that not only Arabs and Palestinians would not accept, but everybody in the world will not accept," Mekdad said.

Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman commended the resolution's rejection.

"This was a very lopsided resolution, very biased resolution, and I therefore wish to commend those countries that did not support it," he said. "This was a resolution which in a very macabre way criticized the victims of terror rather than the perpetrators of terror."

Terrorism against Israelis by Palestinians and Israeli military attacks on Palestinian militants continue despite international pressure on both sides to end the violence and proceed with the Mideast peace plan.

The so-called road map to peace -- backed by the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia -- calls for an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state by 2005.


The road map has suffered a series of blows during an upswing in violence. Two Hamas terrorist bombings September 9 killed 15 Israelis, followed a day later by an Israeli airstrike that wounded Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar. The attack also killed Zahar's son and a bodyguard, and wounded at least 20 others.

Palestinian security sources told CNN that high-level discussions were under way between Palestinian militant factions and the Palestinian Authority for a renewal of a truce against Israeli targets.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a military offshoot of Arafat's Fatah movement, declared a temporary cease-fire in June, but it fell apart last month. All three Palestinian militant groups are on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations.

In violence Tuesday, Israel Defense Forces shot and killed Majid Abu Dosh, a senior Islamic Jihad leader, in the West Bank village of Dura near Hebron, Israeli and Palestinian sources said.

 

When/if Arafat is expelled now, this will cement the opinion in the Middle East that the US does not have their interests at heart, but merely supports Israel time and again.

If Arafat is killed...

 

I did a quick check around the channel at the beginning of the hour to see what stories each station was leading with; Here's the toll.


BBC: US Veto story...

CNN: Hurricane Isabel & the economy; this despite the fact that their headline story on-line is the US veto.

MSNBC: Illegal immigrants serving in the US army, Hurricane Isabel, and L.A. outlawing lapdances...



I am not kidding

 

So in your opinion the UN...representing the nations of the world, the institution which created Israel, and which has repeatedly condemed violence from the Palestinians...and who for years wouldn't even recognize Paelestine's right to be heard or complain...they're the ones who are one-sided against Israel!?!?!?


And the US...who has without exception blocked every UN resolution against Israel...they're the fair ones!?!?

 

1) Re: the US, UN, and Israel/Palestine...one party, the UN, has repeatedly come down on both sides of the issue, and one party, the US, has without fail come down on only one side. From this you get that the UN is not Israel-friendly, and we are sticking up for them this time? Interesting.

2) Without the UN there would be no Israel.

3) What on earth do you mean the Palestinians are simply 'Arab' and have no distinct populace or culture...They date back to the Phillistines, 1200 BC, in that very region. They lived their much longer than the Hebrews/Israelis did.

4) It's always the Israelis who have to give up land to the Palestinians!?!?!? Before the UN kicked them out, all of the land was Palestinian.

5) What on earth do you mean that the Arabs have 95 per cent of the land...of what land? Of the Middle East? There's a simple reason for that...it's an Arab area. The Israelis have never had claim to other parts.


I seriously don't get anything you're saying here.

 

1) We are the only nation which required that these two things be linked; we are the only one which said that, in order to prevent a wrong, another possibly related but legally irrelevant issue needed to be included to prevent that wrong from happening.

2) We are now saying that that was our objection, but is there any reason to believe that had that happened we would have supported it? We have consistently vetoed anything against Israel in the past, and had we only wanted the verbiage to be included we could have lead such a proposal instead of just quashing it.

3) Our demand would have made a distinction which is inconsistent with policy; for example, when the UN ruled against Iraq before the first Gulf War, it didn't feel the need to include the qualifier that slant drilling is wrong...which was the position Iraq based it's actions on, and was an actual illegality. We have never felt the need to condemn the other side when preventing one side from doing something wrong, why would we this time? There is plenty of opportunity for both issues to be dealt with seperately without needing to veto this to accomplish it.