A Palestinian man is seen through a water pipe as he gestures while removing rubble after an Israeli air strike in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip December 21, 2010. Israel carried out a series of air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, Palestinian officials and witnesses said, after militants from the Hamas-ruled territory fired rockets into southern Israel.
Arab nations and the Palestinian Authority are set to ask the United Nations Security Council to demand that Israel halt settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
A draft resolution demanding that Israel “immediately and completely ceases all settlement activities” was to be given to the Security Council’s 15 member governments late yesterday or today, Egyptian Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz said in an interview.
The Palestinian envoy to the UN, Riyad Mansour, said that U.S. diplomats told him that the Obama administration opposes having the Security Council take up a resolution on the settlements issue. The U.S. mission to the UN didn’t respond to a request for a public comment on the draft resolution.
“The only road to peace between Israel and the Palestinians is through direct negotiations,” Israel’s Ambassador Meron Reuben said yesterday in an e-mail. “Palestinian attempts to bypass this road only move us further away from returning to the negotiation table. We hope that the international community won’t allow these moves to divert both sides from reaching the real goal: peace and stability in our region.”
The Security Council move stems from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s instructions last month to Mansour to begin talks in New York on a draft resolution.
Mansour said in an interview that the text was being distributed now so that Security Council members could study it over the next 10 days before formal talks are held in January. He said about 35 nations have agreed to co-sponsor the draft, which also condemns the continuation of settlement activity as illegal and a “major obstacle” to peace.
‘No Movement’
“We have to move on this track because there is no movement on any front,” Abdelaziz said. “We have a crisis situation. The Israelis have rejected the American proposal for a settlement freeze and they continue every day with settlement activity.”
The U.S. decided early this month to stop pressuring Israel to renew a moratorium on West Bank settlement construction. Palestinians refused to return to talks without an extension of the freeze, which expired in September.
The Arabs may have up to 14 votes for the draft resolution in the 15-member Security Council, and recognize that the measure would probably be defeated by a U.S. veto, said Ibrahim Dabbashi, Libya’s deputy ambassador to the UN.
“If it gets 14 votes, they will put it to a vote,” Dabbashi said. “We know finally it will not pass.”
Libya introduced a similar draft resolution when it had a seat on the Security Council two years ago, but didn’t put the text to a vote.
“The situation is different now,” Dabbashi said. “Now there is practically no peace process. It is at a standstill. At the time, there was not an overwhelming majority to put it to a vote. It was not only the U.S. This time we feel it should have 14 votes.”
New Members
Abdelaziz said the entry of India and South Africa onto the Security Council as non-permanent members on Jan. 1 will create a body that will be “much in favor of movement” on the draft. The U.S., he said, might abstain rather than veto.
“Are the Americans even a little bit offended that the Israelis are brushing them aside all the time?” Abdelaziz said. “We will ask them to abstain.”
He said the Arabs haven’t received any signal from the Obama administration that abstention was a possibility.
About 500,000 Jews have moved to the West Bank and Jerusalem since Israel captured the territories in the 1967 Middle East war. The UN says the settlements are illegal, and the International Committee of the Red Cross says they breach the Fourth Geneva Convention governing actions on occupied territory.
Israel says the settlements don’t fall under the convention because the territory wasn’t recognized as belonging to any country before the 1967 war, in which Israel prevailed, and therefore isn’t occupied.
Read More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-22/arabs-to-seek-un-demand-for-end-to-israeli-settlement-building.html
A draft resolution demanding that Israel “immediately and completely ceases all settlement activities” was to be given to the Security Council’s 15 member governments late yesterday or today, Egyptian Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz said in an interview.
The Palestinian envoy to the UN, Riyad Mansour, said that U.S. diplomats told him that the Obama administration opposes having the Security Council take up a resolution on the settlements issue. The U.S. mission to the UN didn’t respond to a request for a public comment on the draft resolution.
“The only road to peace between Israel and the Palestinians is through direct negotiations,” Israel’s Ambassador Meron Reuben said yesterday in an e-mail. “Palestinian attempts to bypass this road only move us further away from returning to the negotiation table. We hope that the international community won’t allow these moves to divert both sides from reaching the real goal: peace and stability in our region.”
The Security Council move stems from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s instructions last month to Mansour to begin talks in New York on a draft resolution.
Mansour said in an interview that the text was being distributed now so that Security Council members could study it over the next 10 days before formal talks are held in January. He said about 35 nations have agreed to co-sponsor the draft, which also condemns the continuation of settlement activity as illegal and a “major obstacle” to peace.
‘No Movement’
“We have to move on this track because there is no movement on any front,” Abdelaziz said. “We have a crisis situation. The Israelis have rejected the American proposal for a settlement freeze and they continue every day with settlement activity.”
The U.S. decided early this month to stop pressuring Israel to renew a moratorium on West Bank settlement construction. Palestinians refused to return to talks without an extension of the freeze, which expired in September.
The Arabs may have up to 14 votes for the draft resolution in the 15-member Security Council, and recognize that the measure would probably be defeated by a U.S. veto, said Ibrahim Dabbashi, Libya’s deputy ambassador to the UN.
“If it gets 14 votes, they will put it to a vote,” Dabbashi said. “We know finally it will not pass.”
Libya introduced a similar draft resolution when it had a seat on the Security Council two years ago, but didn’t put the text to a vote.
“The situation is different now,” Dabbashi said. “Now there is practically no peace process. It is at a standstill. At the time, there was not an overwhelming majority to put it to a vote. It was not only the U.S. This time we feel it should have 14 votes.”
New Members
Abdelaziz said the entry of India and South Africa onto the Security Council as non-permanent members on Jan. 1 will create a body that will be “much in favor of movement” on the draft. The U.S., he said, might abstain rather than veto.
“Are the Americans even a little bit offended that the Israelis are brushing them aside all the time?” Abdelaziz said. “We will ask them to abstain.”
He said the Arabs haven’t received any signal from the Obama administration that abstention was a possibility.
About 500,000 Jews have moved to the West Bank and Jerusalem since Israel captured the territories in the 1967 Middle East war. The UN says the settlements are illegal, and the International Committee of the Red Cross says they breach the Fourth Geneva Convention governing actions on occupied territory.
Israel says the settlements don’t fall under the convention because the territory wasn’t recognized as belonging to any country before the 1967 war, in which Israel prevailed, and therefore isn’t occupied.
Read More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-22/arabs-to-seek-un-demand-for-end-to-israeli-settlement-building.html
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