Monday, July 26, 2004

"Israel" lashes out at EU stance

UNITED NATIONS, New York Israel expressed doubts Wednesday about the reliability of the European Union in the Middle East peace process after EU nations backed an Arab-sponsored General Assembly resolution demanding that Israel abandon and dismantle its separation barrier on the West Bank.

The vote followed a fierce dispute between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel and President Jacques Chirac of France over Sharon's call for Jews to emigrate from France because of "the wildest anti-Semitism." And the Israeli foreign minister said earlier this week that the EU position on the resolution would signal whether it should have a prominent role in peace negotiations.

"Israel is particularly disappointed by the European stand," an Israeli Foreign Ministry statement said.

"The willingness of the EU to fall in with the Palestinian position, together with its desire to reach a European consensus at the price of descending to the lowest common denominator, raises doubts as to the ability of the EU to contribute anything constructive to the diplomatic process."

Israeli officials said Wednesday that construction of the barrier would continue. "Building of the fence will go on," Raanan Gissin, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, told Reuters.

The European Union, along with the United Nations, the United States and Russia, make up the so-called quartet whose road-map plan calls for separate sovereign states for the Palestinians and Israelis.

The vote Tuesday went overwhelmingly against Israel, with 150 in favor, 6 against and 10 abstaining.

Last-minute amendments agreed to by the measure's sponsors during a hastily called two-hour recess succeeded in gaining the support of all 25 members of the EU and more than 30 other nations that had abstained the last time the matter came before the Assembly.

In that vote - a resolution on Dec. 8, 2003 that asked the international court to rule on the barrier's legality - there were 74 abstentions, many of them influenced by the European view, with 90 votes in favor and 8 against.

"Thank God that the fate of Israel and of the Jewish people is not decided in this hall," Israel's ambassador, Dan Gillerman, told the delegates after the result was posted on the electronic board next to the dais.

Nasser al-Kidwa, the Palestinian observer at the UN, described the outcome as "magnificent."

"The debate is completed," Kidwa said. "It is now time for implementation and compliance and at a later stage for additional measures."

Voting against the resolution with the United States and Israel were Australia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau. Abstaining were Cameroon, Canada, El Salvador, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Uganda, Uruguay and Vanuatu.

The United States voted against the measure because, despite the revisions, it remained "unbalanced" and erred in assigning a problem to the courts that rightly should be solved through political negotiations, said James Cunningham, the deputy U.S. ambassador.

"The resolution diverts attention from where it should be on the practical efforts to move the parties towards realization of the ultimate goal of two states living side by side in peace and security," he said.

Resolutions from the 191-member General Assembly are nonbinding and largely symbolic, unlike those passed by the 15-member Security Council. Israel had said in advance that the vote would not alter its resolve to continue construction of the barrier.

Kidwa said before the vote that he would push for a binding Security Council resolution, even though such a move would draw an American veto. The United States vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning the barrier last October.

"The threat of veto will not thwart us, and all others who respect and uphold international law," Kidwa said in the debate on Friday that led to the vote.

The vote had been postponed twice since then in an effort to give Arab and EU diplomats time to reach agreement on language that would persuade European countries to change their stance of abstaining on such measures to one of support.

After the recess Tuesday evening, two paragraphs were added to the resolution that satisfied European demands.

The first called on the Palestinian Authority "to undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks" and on the Israelis "to take no action undermining trust, including deputations and attacks on civilians and extra judicial killings."

The second added paragraph reaffirmed "that all states have the right and duty to take action in conformity with international law and international humanitarian law to counter deadly acts of violence against the civilian population in order to protect the lives of their citizens."

Gillerman disparaged these phrases as "grudging references to terrorism" and "carefully crafted, often constructively ambiguous phrases." He said that adopting the resolution was "pandering to an agenda that sought to focus on the response to terrorism but to marginalize the gravity of terrorism itself."

Under the resolution, the Assembly demanded that Israel act on the decision by the International Court of Justice in The Hague on July 9 that the barrier built on West Bank land to shield Israeli settlements was illegal and should be torn down. It also requested the secretary general to compile a register of damages to be used in calculating reparations owed. The barrier includes electronic fencing, concrete and wire walls and trenches and guard towers, all of which Israel asserts is needed to ward off Palestinian attackers and suicide bombers.

It is, Israel says, a necessary defensive response to the Palestinian leadership's failure to hold back the attackers.

Source: New York Times

# ANTENNA SHARON | 7:25:00 pm |