Politics in Israel - United Nations and Israel
Israel and the United
Nations have had very mixed relations, since the state'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), although other issues arise from time to
time.
History
Both the League of Nations's 1922 Mandate for Palestine and the 1947 UN
Partition Plan supported the aim of Zionism: the establishment of the
Jewish national homeland in the Land of Israel. The UN General Assembly
Resolution 181 (November 29, 1947), which served as the foundation for
the Israeli Declaration of Independence, was passed by the General
Assembly with 33 votes in favor, 13 against, and 10 absentions. It was
the first and only time the United Nations has created a nation 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, a substantial part of the former was 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 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. The
Arab leaders repeatedly rejected every 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 ... [I]t's
too late to talk of peaceful solutions," (Horowitz, 1953, p. 233).
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 to destroy the
nascent Jewish state.
On May 15, 1948, the Arab League Secretary General Abdul Razek Azzam
announced the intention to wage "a war of extermination and a momentous
massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the
Crusades." (Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, p.219). On the same day,
the Arab League circulated in the UN Statement by the Arab League States
Following the Establishment of the State of Israel (May 15, 1948) 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."
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; in the following two
decades a comparable number of Jewish refugees from the Arab and Muslim
countries of the Middle East and North Africa were absorbed by Israel
and other countries without assistance from the UN.
Soviet influence
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
...
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.1 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". (See Zionology,
Anti-Zionist committee of the Soviet public, History of the Jews in
Russia and the Soviet Union)
Current situation
Although the UN Charter gives every state the right to membership of the
Security Council, it also 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. Israel would
naturally belong to the Asian group, but that group has repeatedly
failed to agree on Israel's admission. It has indefinite temporary
membership of the "Western Europe and Others" group and agreed not to
seek Security Council membership on that basis.
Israel has particularly few supporters in the United Nations, in part
because of the large Muslim contingent (57 countries) and their
influence: in terms of sheer voting strength in the General Assembly,
this block represents about 1/4 of the delegates, though no Muslim
country holds a permanent seat on the Security Council. See Arab League
and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Moreover, Israel is the only member
nation that that has never been enfranchised with voting rights in any
part of the United Nations.
A few countries have consistently supported Israel's actions in the UN,
such as the United States of America and also the tiny states of
Micronesia and the Marshall Islands, which are both associated states of
the U.S. In recent times, Australia, under the leadership of John
Howard, has 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
frequently abstain from anti-Israel votes. Many European countries have
been strong supporters of Israel, but also support 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 — in fact, this is a significant
factor in the large number of vetos the United States has enforced in
general.
Many Israelis perceive the UN to be deeply prejudiced against Israel. As
evidence, they cite what they say is the disproportionately long list of
resolutions concerning Israel, especially the 1975 Resolution 3379,
which qualified Zionism as a form of racism (revoked by Resolution 4686
in December 1991 as a condition for participation in the Madrid peace
talks); and the alleged 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. No legal challenge has to
date succeeded in substantiating these claims against the UN.
The perception amongst Israelis that the UN is biased against their
country helps explain the refusal of successive Israeli governments to
pay attention to the numerous motions passed against Israel by the
General Assembly. Arabs and their supporters reply that this is a red
herring used to legitimize the refusal to comply with overwhelming
international pressure for change in Israeli policy.
In her June 21, 2004 speech at a Conference on Confronting
anti-Semitism: Education for Tolerance and Understanding sponsored by
the United Nations Department of Information and in her articles, Anne
Bayefsky, attending as representative of the International Association
of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, advocated the necessity of UN reforms and
criticized some of the UN policies and practices:
* There is only one entire UN Division devoted to a single group of
people: the UN Division for Palestinian Rights (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).
* One of the General Assembly six committees, "the Fourth Committee,
routinely devotes 30% of its time to the condemnation of Israel."
* "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."
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 lopsided resolutions contribute to the Middle East peace
process. The 76-page report (PDF) 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 a product of bias."
* In resolutions of the UN General Assembly, "[v]iolence 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."
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 one to do so was Israeli envoy to the U.N. Abba Eban
in 1952. Israel's candidacy was put forward by the Western Europe and
Others Group (WEOG).
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_United_Nations
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