Tea leaves read at United Nations as request on Palestinians reviewed

By Chanan Tigay
October 16, 2005
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=15946&intcategoryid=2

NEW YORK, Oct. 16 (JTA) — On the surface, there’s nothing special about a recent U.N. committee request to renew the mandate of divisions that promote the Palestinian agenda at the United Nations. 
But some Jewish groups are watching how U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the General Assembly react to the annual request. They see it as a barometer of how serious the United Nations is about reform — and about institutionalizing an improved atmosphere for Israel. 
The request from the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People to look at the mandates of the Division of Palestinian Affairs and the Special Information Program on the Question of Palestine came on the heels of last month’s U.N. World Summit, where world leaders signed on to a document calling for significant U.N. reform. 
“Has Kofi Annan been given the power to organize his own house?” wondered Amy Goldstein, director of U.N. affairs at B’nai B’rith International. “If he can do it for everything else but the Middle East, then it is absolutely illegitimate. That would just demonstrate that the U.N. is signaling out Israel and the Middle East for special treatment which basically is anti-Semitic.” 
Israel recently has undertaken a series of steps aimed at increasing its role at the United Nations. Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Dan Gillerman, last month submitted Israel’s first-ever candidacy for the Security Council. Israel also recently proposed its first U.N. resolution. 
The Israeli mission and U.S. Jewish organizations hope the 30-year-old Palestinian-related committees will be shut down. Goldstein sees them as “the institutionalization of the Zionism = Racism resolution,” the infamous 1975 resolution that stood until 1991. 
As part of the U.N.’s management reform, Annan is looking to review General Assembly mandates that are more than five years old. Member states are negotiating over whether or not the secretary-general will be given the power to make recommendations with regard to the future of older mandates. 
In the meantime, at least, the General Assembly itself has the final say, and will most likely take up the issue during its current session, which ends in December. 
“Getting rid of these entities is very important,” said Shai Franklin, director of international organizations for the World Jewish Congress. 
But he added, “If the member states refuse to empower the secretary-general or if they refuse to do what they need to do in order to get rid of these entities, that doesn’t mean that the secretary-general or his advisers are not genuine in their efforts to promote Middle East peace.” 
A U.N. spokesman told JTA that Annan would look into the mandates in the near future. 
“That review will be done looking at what these bodies do and what their usefulness is,” said Farhan Haq. “There wouldn’t be any specific comment about this or that body at this stage.” 
Annan “should be objective enough and courageous enough to say that the mandates are against the principles of the organization because they simply take sides in a conflict; they serve to adopt and promote the narrative of one side of the conflict,” a diplomatic source at Israel’s U.N. mission, who asked to remain anonymous, told JTA. “And they really don’t, I think, reflect the priorities of the organization in the 21st century.” 
Even if Annan does find that the committees have outlived their usefulness, the diplomatic source was skeptical that the General Assembly would adopt a recommendation to kill them. 
“It is obviously a test case, but with some reservations,” he said. “It’s important to remember that there is a distinction to be made between the secretariat and membership” of the General Assembly. 
At a moment when the United Nations is looking to bolster its credibility, it should break with the “business as usual” of anti-Israel activity, said Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch in Geneva. 
The Palestinian committees are part of a larger, systemic problem, he said. 
“Kofi Annan ought to be at the forefront of exposing this obvious waste of U.N. resources, money that could be used for Palestinian development and humanitarian aid and is instead wasted on propaganda,” he said. “Kofi Annan should be the first to speak out on this and ought to lead the rest of the General Assembly in moving forward, away from its ignoble past.” 
Gillerman has said that the committees cost the U.N. $6 million annually. But Franklin noted that it’s not a huge sum in the context of the U.N. budget. 
“We’re not looking to save money,” he said. “It’s the symbolism, and it’s the idea that there is a U.N.-sponsored propaganda machine turning out material which undermines the efforts that the U.N. is on record as supporting.”