ISRAEL AND THE UNITED NATIONS

'Israel and the United Nations' have had mixed relations since Israel's founding on May 14, 1948. Much of the controversy has to do with the various permutations of the Arab-Israeli conflict (including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict). Other issues arise from time to time.

Contents

History

Soviet influence

Allegations of Anti-Israel bias

2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict

Current situation

See also

References

Notes

External links

History

Both the League of Nations's and the 1947 UN Partition Plan supported the aim of Zionism: the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
The UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (November 29, 1947), which served as the foundation for the Israeli Declaration of Independence, with Jerusalem to be an internationalised city (''Corpus separatum''), was passed by the General Assembly with 33 votes in favor, 13 against, and 10 abstentions. It was the first and only time the United Nations has recommended creating two states by way of a General Assembly vote.
By 1947, Jews constituted 60% of the population in the areas designated to the Jewish state by the partition; while the total territory assigned to the Jewish state exceeded proportionally the land allotted to the Arabs (not taking to account the massive wave of Jewish immigrants and refugees soon to come), a majority of the proposed state's area was made up of the Negev desert. Substantial Jewish immigration, whose quantity was determined by the British government, had increased the proportion of Jewish inhabitants of Palestine from 11% in 1922 to 33%.
The Israeli prime minister David Ben Gurion, among some Jewish leaders agreed to the plan, but the Zionist right, a minority, did not. The Palestinians rejected the partition plan and war followed. [http://mondediplo.com/2000/11/04mideastjerusa}
The Arab states and other supporters of the Palestinians argued that the General Assembly's decision to endorse the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine was unjust to the Palestinian Arab population ^[1]. The Arab leaders rejected the plan involving partition and refused to officially negotiate with the Jewish leadership. Arab League Secretary, Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam told the Jewish Agency in September 1947: "You won't get anything by peaceful means or compromise ... "It's too late to talk of peaceful solutions." ^[2].

As the Mandate expired on May 14, 1948 and the State of Israel was announced according to the UN Partition Plan, joint Jordanian, Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese and Iraqi troops invaded and fought Israel.
On May 15, 1948, the Arab League circulated a statement in the UN which insisted on "a unitary Palestinian State, in accordance with democratic principles, whereby its inhabitants will enjoy complete equality before the law, (and whereby) minorities will be assured of all the guarantees recognized in democratic constitutional countries and (whereby) the holy places will be preserved and the rights of access thereto guaranteed". It also "drew attention to the injustice implied in this solution (affecting) the right of the people of Palestine to immediate independence, as well as democratic principles and the provisions of the Covenant of the League of Nations and (the Charter) of the United Nations." ^[3]
In the aftermath of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East was established to alleviate the condition of Palestinian refugees.
The UN General Assembly voted to admit Israel to UN membership in Resolution 273 (III) of May 11, 1949.

Soviet influence

Main articles: Soviet Union and the Arab-Israeli conflict, History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union

Political Zionism was officially stamped out for the entire history of the Soviet Union as a form of bourgeois nationalism. Without changing its official anti-Zionist stance, the USSR briefly supported the establishment of Israel in 1947. Before voting for the 1947 partition, Andrei Gromyko stated:

As we know, the aspirations of a considerable part of the Jewish people are linked with the problem of Palestine and of its future administration. This fact scarcely requires proof... The United Nations cannot and must not regard this situation with indifference, since this would be incompatible with the high principles proclaimed in its Charter ... ^[4]

From late 1944 until 1948, Stalin had adopted a ''de facto'' pro-Zionist foreign policy, apparently believing that the new country would be socialist and would speed the decline of British influence in the Middle East. ^[5] Three days after Israel declared independence, the Soviet Union legally recognized it. However, by the end of 1948 and throughout the course of the Cold War, the Soviet Union unequivocally supported various Arab regimes against Israel. The official position of the Soviet Union and its satellite states and agencies was that Zionism was a tool used by the Jews and Americans for "racist imperialism".
After the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, Israel became one of the loudest critics of South African apartheid regime, which, along with Israel's intensive cooperation with the newly independent Sub-Saharan states, brought about a break in relations with Pretoria. After 1967, however, and particularly in the 1970s, Israel became Pretoria's strategic partner (both countries conducting a common nuclear policy and conducting a nuclear test as of 1979), which was one of the points in the criticism of Israel in the UN.

Allegations of Anti-Israel bias

Critics who accuse the UN of anti-Israel prejudice cite what they see as a disproportionately long list of resolutions concerning Israel,Israel and the UN - An Uneasy Relationship wri (Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations). Accessed June 19, 2006 especially the 1975 Resolution 3379, which qualified Zionism as a form of racism (later revoked with Resolution 4686), and the complicity of UNIFIL in the October 2000 Lebanon abduction of three Israeli Engineering Corps soldiers by Hezbollah. In September 2004, the bereaved families announced that they intended to sue the UN for its part in the abductions.
Starting in the mid-1970s, an Arab-Soviet-Third World bloc joined to form a pro-PLO lobby at the United Nations. This was particularly true in the General Assembly where these countries frequently voted together to pass resolutions attacking Israel and supporting the PLO. The United Nations and Israel

An early example came in 1975, when soon after the award of permanent representative status to the PLO, at the instigation of the Arab states and the Soviet Bloc, the Assembly approved Resolution 3379 equating Zionism and racism.
U.S. Ambassador Daniel Moynihan called the resolution “a reckless and obscene act.” Obituary: Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Israeli Ambassador Chaim Herzog told his fellow delegates the resolution was “based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance.” Hitler, he declared, would have felt at home listening to the UN debate on the measure.^[6]
In her June 21, 2004 speech ^[7] at a ''Conference on Confronting anti-Semitism: Education for Tolerance and Understanding'' sponsored by the United Nations Department of Information (and in related articles ^[8]) Anne Bayefsky, a human rights scholar and activist attending as representative of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, advocated the need for deep reforms within the UN and criticized some of the UN policies and practices:

★ There is only one entire UN Division devoted to a single group of people: the United Nations Division for Palestinian Rights ^[9] (created in 1977).

★ The only UN day dedicated to a specific people is November 29, the annual UN Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

★ There is only one refugee agency dedicated to a single refugee situation: UNRWA (in operation since 1950).

★ "The General Assembly operates through six committees of the whole. One of them, the Fourth Committee, routinely devotes 30 percent of its time to the condemnation of Israel."^[10]

★ "The General Assembly emergency sessions... began in 1956, and since then six of the ten emergency sessions ever held, have been about Israel. The 10th such session began in 1997 and has been reconvened 13 times. ... a million dead in Rwanda or two million dead in Sudan might have warranted one General Assembly emergency session."

★ "...the UN's primary human-rights body is the UN Human Rights Commission. 30% of the resolutions condemning specific states ever adopted over 40 years are directed at Israel."
Anne Bayefsky acknowledges that "Israel’s policies are, of course, fair game for legitimate criticism. But the UN’s outrage is grossly selective, especially when one considers the record of any number of other member nations."^[11]
Anne Bayefsky writes: "The grossly disproportionate emphasis on Israel by the U.N. human rights machinery depletes resources and reduces the opportunities to consider many other situations. But it is also unacceptable for a more fundamental reason, namely, its inextricable link to the U.N.'s disturbing record on antisemitism."^[12]
In April 2004 the UN special envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, told French radio listeners that "the great poison in the region" is Israeli "domination" and told American television viewers that the Israelis "are not interested in peace, no matter what you seem to believe in America".^[13][14]
In August 2004, the United Nations Association of the United Kingdom (UNA-UK) published a report analyzing thirteen years of United Nations resolutions on the Arab-Israeli conflict. In light of the study’s conclusions, Malcolm Harper, speaking on behalf of the UNA-UK (of which he was director until recently), called for an examination into how, if at all, the resolutions contribute to the Middle East peace process. The 76-page report ^[15] makes the following principal findings:

★ The texts of UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions are "often unbalanced in terms of the length of criticism and condemnation of Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories as against Palestinian actions such as suicide bombings."

★ The United Nations is "palpably more critical of Israeli policies and practices than it is of either Palestinian actions or the wider Arab world. However criticism is not necessarily the product of bias."

★ In resolutions of the UN General Assembly, "violence perpetrated against Israeli civilians, including the use of suicide bombers, is mentioned only a few times and then in only vague terms."
The report also stated "However, criticism is not necessarily a product of bias, and it is not the intention here to suggest that UNGA and UNSC reproaches of Israel stem from prejudice. From the perspective of the UN, Israel has repeatedly flouted fundamental UN tenets and ignored important decisions."
The event celebrating an annual "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" on November 29, 2005 was attended by Kofi Annan and other high-ranking diplomats. In his January 3, 2006 letter to Mr. Annan, the US ambassador John Bolton criticized the UN for promoting an anti-Israel agenda and noted that the map prominently displayed at the event "erases the state of Israel" only days after Iran's leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech calling to wipe Israel off the map. The organizer of the "solidarity" event is the ''Division for Palestinian Rights'' (2004-2005 UN budget: $5,449,600). Other bodies include the ''Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories'' ($254,500), the ''Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People'' ($60,800), and the ''Information Activities on the Question of Palestine'' ($566,000). Similar funding has been approved for the next biannual budget [1].

2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict

On July 26th 2006 Israeli aircraft in South Lebanon dropped bombs onto UN observers, killing four of them.^[16]
The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan stated that "I am shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defence Forces of a UN Observer post in southern Lebanon." As at the time Annan had no evidence for the bombing being deliberate, many pundits noted that Hezbollah members had been firing on Israeli positions from the immediate vicinity of the post, and described Annan's statement as indicative of the UN's anti-Israel bias.^[17] Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, expressed “deep sorrow” over the deaths, and ordered an investigation into the incident.^[18] Tzipi Livni, Israel's Foreign Minister was quoted as saying: “During a war these kind of accidents can happen.”^[16]
In 2006 the organization accused Israel of violating humanitarian law in connection with the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War. Criticism of Israel Is not 'anti-Semitism'
The conflict was suspended with a cease-fire implemented under UN Security Council Resolution 1701. Among the terms of UNSCR 1701 are cessation of hostilities; Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon; disarmament of Hezbollah; full control of Lebanon by the Lebanese government; and removal of all paramilitary forces (i.e. Hezbollah) south of the Litani River with their replacement by UNIFIL. As of December 2006 hostilities have largely ceased, Israel has withdrawn from Lebanon, and UNIFIL forces are in place. The remaining provisions have not been carried out. In the time since the enactment of UNSCR 1701 both the Lebanese government and UNIFIL have disavowed any intent to disarm Hezbollah.[4]
[5]
[6]

Current situation

Dan Gillerman, current Israeli Ambassador to the UN

The UN Charter gives every state the right to membership of the UN Security Council, and says that membership will be decided according to equitable geographic distribution. The latter requirement has meant in practice that non-permanent Security Council members are selected from the five geographical groupings of member states. Without membership in a regional group, a member state cannot sit on the Security Council or other key UN bodies.
Geographically, the State of Israel would belong to the Asian Group, but that group has repeatedly denied Israel's admission. Israel has been the only UN member excluded from a regional group. On May 30, 2000, Israel accepted an invitation to become a temporary member of the Western European and Others (WEOG) regional group. Israel's membership in the group is restricted: initially it was stated that Israel would have to reapply for the membership every four years but at the first application in 2004 membership was granted for an indefinite period. For the first two years, Israeli representatives weren't allowed to run for positions on the UN Council, Israel wasn't allowed to present candidacies for open seats in any UN body and it isn't able to compete for major UN bodies, such as the Economic and Social Council, for a longer period. In addition to these restrictions, Israel is allowed to participate in WEOG activities only in the UN New York office, being excluded from the UN offices in Geneva, Nairobi, Rome and Vienna. Among other issues handled in these offices are human rights and racism.^[20] Nevertheless, Israel's role within WEOG has allowed it to successfully nominate candidacies for membership on committees and organizations within the UN system.
A few countries have consistently supported Israel's actions in the UN, such as the United States of America and the states of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands, both of which are associated states of the U.S. Recently Australia, under the leadership of John Howard, and Canada, under the leadership of Stephen Harper, have also supported Israel at the UN.
The Western nations frequently condemn Israeli actions including, on occasion, some which Israel claims as being necessary to protect itself from "Palestinian terrorism and Arab hostility". The European states typically have abstained from anti-Israel votes. Many European countries have adopted a neutral stance, abstaining from the ongoing condemnations of Israel and supporting the foundation of a Palestinian state. Such countries include France, Russia, and Germany.
The United States has frequently used its veto to protect Israel from condemnatory Security Council votes — almost all U.S. vetos cast since 1986 have concerned UN resolutions against Israel.
Israel's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, was elected to the position of Vice-President of the 60th UN General Assembly. The last Israeli to hold that position was Israeli envoy to the UN, Abba Eban, in 1952. Israel's candidacy was put forward by the Western Europe and Others Group (WEOG).

See also

★ List of the UN resolutions concerning Israel

★ List of Israel Ambassadors to the United Nations

★ Negroponte doctrine

★ Oswaldo Aranha - Brazilian Diplomat who pursued the creation of the State of Israel

★ New antisemitism

References

★ Horowitz, David. ''State in the Making''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953

★ Johnson, Paul, ''A History of the Jews'', London, 1987

Notes

1. palestineremembered.com - ''Why did Arabs reject the proposed UN GA partition plan which split Palestine into Jewish and Arab states?''
2. Horowitz, 1953, p.233
3. Statement by the Arab League States Following the Establishment of the State of Israel (May 15, 1948)
4. UN Debate Regarding the Special Committee on Palestine: Gromyko Statement. 14 May 1947 77th Plenary Meeting Document A/2/PV.77
5. Johnson, 1987, p.527
6.

7. One Small Step. Is the U.N. finally ready to get serious about anti-Semitism? by Anne Bayefsky, (Opinion Journal) June 21, 2004. Accessed June 19, 2006
8. Anne Bayefsky (Winds of Change). Accessed June 19, 2006
9. UN Division for Palestinian Rights
10. Undiplomatic Imbalance, by Anne Bayefsky, National Review Online, 13-12-2004.
11. The UN and the Jews, Anne Bayefsky, Commentary Magazine, Vol. 117, February 2004
12.
Anne F. Bayefsky ISRAEL AND THE UNITED NATIONS' HUMAN RIGHTS AGENDA: THE INEQUALITY OF NATIONS LARGE AND SMALL Summer 199, [ILR 29 424]
13. Why the Palestinians are in such a state By Mark Steyn. April 27, 2004 (''The Telegraph''). Accessed August 19, 2006
14. The Struggle against Anti-Israel Bias at the UN Commission on Human Rights Hillel C. Neuer (UN Watch. Issue 138). January 4, 2006. Accessed August 19, 2006
15. Comparison of United Nations Member States' Language in Relation to Israel and Palestine as Evidenced by Resolutions in the UN Security Council and UN General Assembly August 2004 report (PDF). Accessed June 19, 2006
16. UN observers begged Israelis to stop shelling their position
17.

★ Kofi Annan shows his stripes

★ Annan's libel

★ Kofi Annan's hasty rush to judgment
'Note:' Globeandmail.com version here [2], but subscription required.

★ Annan should have known better: Israel's record of care suggests bombing of UN peacekeeping post was accidental Lorne Gunter
'Note:' The Edmonton Journal version here [3], but subscription required.

★ Mr. Annan, meet the truth

★ Mel, Kofi, and me

★ The Brink of Madness

18.

★ Israel Expresses 'Deep Sorrow' Over Killing of UN Peacekeepers

★ Israeli bomb kills UN observers

★ U.N.: Israeli airstrike hits U.N. observer post

19. UN observers begged Israelis to stop shelling their position
20. Myths & Facts Online. The United Nations by Mitchell G. Bard (Jewish Virtual Library). Accessed June 19, 2006

External links

★ Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations

★ UN Watch, an ECOSOC accredited NGO that speaks against what they view as anti-Israel bias at the UN

★ Eye on the UN

★ United Nations ''Jewish Virtual Library'' selection of articles

★
★ Anti-Semitism in the United Nations

★ United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine (UNISPAL)

★ United Nations Division for Palestinian Rights

★ United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People

★ International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People at the United Nations