| Mid-East Realities | www.middleeast.org |
MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 12/20/2001: No one really believes the Arabs, and the Arafat-led Palestinians, have much more diplomatic power and skill then is their sorry state when it comes to other kinds of power and skill. The Arab regimes, Arafat's among them, remain amazingly weak, impotent, and co-opted; a once grand civilization now fractured and controlled by the dominant Western powers and their technological/institutional superiority. And of course there is the rather sorry history of the United Nations going way back to its origins when the Americans pushed and threatened and bribed in order to get the resolution "partitioning" Palestine barely passed in the first place. More and more over the years in fact the U.N. has become the tool of the Americans, so much so that a high-ranking U.N. official actually said not that long ago "We know the U.N. has become an appendage of the State Department".
The General Assembly could act seriously today; it has the power. And there is the precedent as well -- South Africa in the days of Apartheid. The U.S. has no veto in the GA; something that under today's conditions, and precisely because of last week's "astounding" Security Council veto, should be acted upon. The GA could under the Uniting for Peace procedure and with past precedent as its guide "suspend" the membership of Israel. That is in fact what should be done. That is in fact the only kind of shock therapy that just could awaken the Israelis to the real predicament they have put themselves in and the real cost they might be forced to pay if they persist.
Of course the Americans and many of the Europeans would scream and rant, Washington probably even threatening to "withhold" "its" money for the U.N. or even bring about its end. So be it. Actually, these days especially, a case can be made that the U.S. needs the U.N. as least as much as the other way around, albeit for different reasons. And besides, unless the U.N. is going to stop being an "appendage of the State Department" its not really all that useful as an independent institution anyway.
Today the U.N. has a historic opportunity; not to mention responsibility; and all the more so because of its past mistakes and failings as well as the original "partition" resolution that has gone unfulfilled now for more than fifty years and resulted in such terrible suffering for so many millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly scheduled an emergency debate on the Middle East crisis for Thursday at the request of Arab and nonaligned nations after the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution stating that the Palestinian Authority was essential to the peace process.
The session will be held at 3 p.m. EST Thursday, assembly President Han Seung-soo of South Korea said on Wednesday in a letter to the world body's 189 member nations.
The request from the League of Arab States and the Non-Aligned Movement came after the United States Saturday used its veto power to kill a resolution in the 15-nation Security Council demanding an immediate halt to Middle East violence and asserting that the Palestinian Authority was essential to peace efforts.
U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said that resolution, sponsored by Egypt and Tunisia, was aimed at isolating Israel politically and did not mention recent suicide bombings against Israelis or those responsible for them.
Arab nations were expected to propose a similar resolution to the General Assembly at this week's emergency session, diplomats said.
The United States, Israel's closest ally, does not have a veto in the General Assembly, as it does in the Security Council. But the assembly lacks the council's broad powers in the realm of international peace and security.
While General Assembly votes reflect merely the will of the international community, Security Council actions can be legally binding under international law. Five of the council's 15 seats are held by permanent members with veto power -- the United States, China, Britain, France and Russia.
At least 784 Palestinians and 233 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation erupted in September 2000 after the Middle East peace process stalled.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, under intense international pressure to act after a wave of suicide bombings in Israel, has outlawed the military wings of Hamas and other groups and arrested dozens of militants in recent days.
But Israel has accused him of going after low-level activists rather than arresting the militants it most wants to see behind bars. And Palestinian militants have vowed to defy Arafat.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan said both the General Assembly and Security Council were "organs that member states could resort to if they have an issue that they consider of such importance."
"The Palestinian Authority has decided to resort to that means, and ... one cannot prevent them from going to the General Assembly for it to be discussed," he told a year-end news conference.
Annan acknowledged Arafat had been accused of not doing all he could do to contain extremist acts. But he said that to do that, the Palestinian leader would "also need the right environment and the climate to carry out his responsibility."
"In my own discussions with him, he had indicated how difficult it is for him to carry out those functions if bombing and shelling is going on and his police cannot move around. And so the Israeli side also has to help create a condition that will allow Chairman Arafat to do this," he said.
| Mid-East Realities | www.middleeast.org |
| Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/12/515.htm |