UN fence vote delayed to Monday 

July 17, 2004
The Jerusalem Post
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Gillerman: UN's debate on the fence is focusing on the value of land over the value of human life 

The UN General Assembly will vote Monday on the Palestinian Administration's demand that Israel fulfill the verdict of the International Court of Justice in the Hague regarding the Security Fence. 

The vote was delayed to Monday following a request by European states that requested amendments to the Palestinian demand that requires finally sanctions be leveled at Israel for non-compliance. 

The US ambassador to the UN said the Palestinian resolution was one-sided and that he would vote against it. 

The US is also expected to veto any anti-Israel resolution in the Security Council 

With the US standing firmly behind Israel, and the Arab world united against it, the UN General Assembly debated the security fence's legitimacy Friday. 


The debate was held under the banner, Israel's illegal actions in East Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories. 


Amongst the speakers at Friday's debate were Palestinian envoy to the UN Nasser al-Kidwa, and Israel's Ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman. 

First to speak was Nasr al-Kidwa, the Palestinian UN observer, who informed the UN General Assembly that the Palestinians may seek a follow-up to the International Court of Justice advisory opinion a week ago that the Israeli fence violates international law. 

The opinion is not legally binding. 

The 191-member world body is considering a draft resolution that would demand that Israel comply with the court. 

Al-Kidwa said it isn't too early to start thinking about sanctions and action to end Israel's settlement activities because of Israel's negative response to last week's court decision. 

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered construction to go ahead after the ruling. 

Al-Kidwa said the Palestinians had chosen to move slowly because they hoped that positive dynamics will make Israel comply with the ruling, which called for the illegal barrier to be dismantled and for reparations for Palestinians harmed by its construction. 

A vote on the Palestinian-backed draft resolution had been expected Friday but negotiations were taking place with the European Union, and Al-Kidwa said the vote would be held on Monday. 

Israel's UN ambassador, Dan Gillerman, countered that the court's ruling was a dark day for the International Court of Justice and a dark day for the United Nations because the advisory opinion ignored Palestinian terrorist attacks against innocent Israelis that forced construction of the barrier. 

We are not impressed by lectures from Palestinian representatives about respect for the rule of law when they are supporting a brutal campaign of terrorism which violates every basic legal norm, he said. 

We call on them to comply with a binding legal obligation ... for the Palestinian side to abandon terror as a strategic choice. 

Gillerman accused the United Nations of dealing with the security fence and its impact on the welfare of the Palestinians, but did not even deign to discuss the reason the fence was being built in the first place defense against Palestinian terrorism. 

The UN is focusing on the value of land over the value of human life, Gillerman said. 

The fence can be moved and removed, Gillerman added, but the lives of the victims of terrorism cannot be returned. 

Gillerman held up pictures of two victims of Palestinian terror as he made the comments. 

There is much talk here about rights; about the human rights of everyone of Palestinians and Israelis. 

But there is no mention here on the most basic human right of all the right not to be murdered, Gillerman said. 

The International Court of Justice in The Hague has been added to the long list of UN organizations recruited to support just one side. 

The ICJ has issued a completely one-sided ruling, one that puts on trial those responding to terror. The ICJ ignored the terrorism and the victims of terror innocent Israelis. It ignored the Palestinians' duty to prevent terrorism, Gillerman said. 

Nasser al-Kidwa said Israel should face the threat of sanctions. 

Israel will have to choose whether to declare itself - officially, morally and legally - an outlaw state, or to reconcile itself with a new reality, Kidwa told the assembly. 


Gillerman fired back that other nations in the Middle East did not offer citizens the rights and legal protections of the Israeli courts, which ordered part of the wall to be re-routed. 


These regimes have the gall to speak of sanctions for a measure that saved lives, he said, referring to the West Bank security fence. 

For them to lecture anyone about the rule of law or accuse others of being outlaws, we have indeed reached a point where the inmates are running the asylum, Gillerman said. 

Bolstered by a legal opinion from the International Court of Justice last week which stated that construction of a wall beyond Israel's pre-1967 borders is illegal, the Palestinians via the League of Arab States are asking the General Assembly to insist that the barrier be removed. 

The session promises to be a very stormy one and a very dramatic one, Gillerman told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. He added that it was unclear whether a vote would be called today. 


Unfortunately, UN resolutions have a way of being against Israel, said Gillerman, who has spent the week meeting with ambassadors to muster support for the fence. 


We will point to the great hypocrisy in the fact that the court has actually put the people who are trying to prevent terror and the victims of terror in the dock, rather than the terrorists themselves, he said. 

Foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom spoke with his French, Dutch and British counterparts over the past few days in an effort to get these nations to vote against the Palestinian resolution. 

Muin Shreim, a counselor at the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the UN, and a member of the Palestinian team to the ICJ, told the Jerusalem Post, We would like the UN to adopt a resolution that will show that the international community at large supports the ruling of the ICJ. 

We are asking the United States and [other member states] to abide by their legal obligation as the court spelled it out, and not to recognize the illegal situation, said Shreim. 

In keeping with the ICJ advisory opinion that Israel should make reparations to the Palestinians for harm caused by the fence, the resolution will ask the General Assembly to establish a register for recording such damages, including damages to Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem. 

We want to start the process in this regard, said Shreim. 


Gillerman called the move one of the most outrageous things. 


If they are examining the damage to property, will they also be willing to examine the irreparable, irreplaceable, and irreversible damage to human lives caused by terrorist acts such as suicide bombings? asked Gillerman. He said that property can be replaced, while human lives cannot. 

I hope the General Assembly will not stoop in this kind of direction, he added. 

Looking to support the Palestinians, the European nations began negotiating Wednesday evening to include compromising language acceptable to a majority of member states, according to a Western diplomatic source. 

At issue was the resolution's harsh language. Various European nations, including Britain, Germany, Italy, and Denmark, asked that it be toned down as a condition for supporting the resolution. 


The Europeans were seeking a draft stating that the General Assembly merely takes note of the ICJ's non-binding opinion, and that the parties work toward implementing the Quartet-backed road map for peace, the source said. 


The EU wants a common position, the source noted. 

At press time, a spokesman from the mission of the Netherlands, which currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, said that member states were still conferring on what the EU position will be. 

In New York and abroad, Israeli embassies, consulates, and UN missions, as well as Jewish organizations, initiated a massive diplomatic campaign last week aimed at garnering opposition to the resolution, said Israel's deputy permanent representative to the UN, Ambassador Arye Mekel. 

At the US mission to the UN, Ambassador John Danforth was the only envoy this week to join Israel's representative in voicing his opposition to the resolution. 

It's not helpful that it's one-sided, Danforth told reporters on Wednesday. It's yet another resolution to be brought before the General Assembly. There were 22 such resolutions last year. They don't do any good, he said. 

Danforth also questioned the Palestinians' motive in pressing for a resolution following a Security Council briefing by UN special Middle East envoy Terje Roed Larsen during which he criticized the Palestinians' failure to reform their security services and a resulting PA declaration effectively banning Larsen from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. 

The issue to me is, how do we go forward on any kind of peace process? 

The peace process, to me, means balance. It means that neither side is going to like everything that it hears or every suggestion that's made, Danforth said. 


So is it going to be a balanced approach, or is it simply going to be a rerun of the past, which is that we all make our political statements almost in propaganda fashion? 


Gillerman predicted that Friday's debate will be foster another resolution that will be added to a sad and hypocritical list of anti-Israel resolutions; it does not carry with it real significance. 


The Palestinians and the Arab countries have a long tradition of mustering anti-Israel support in the General Assembly, which has in the past approved hundreds of anti-Israel resolutions. 



General Assembly resolutions, like the ICJ ruling, are non-binding. 


The General Assembly, however, can refer the matter to the Security Council, which can issue sanctions against Israel. 

We hope very much, and we have reason to believe, that the US will veto any anti-Israel resolution in the Security Council, Gillerman said. 

He said that when the General Assembly agreed to ask the ICJ for an advisory opinion on the security fence, four permanent members of the council the US, France, Britain, and Russia all objected. 

One has to remember that, when the General Assembly in December decided to send this whole matter to the court, 82 countries either abstained or objected to it, including the whole European Union and over 30 [other] countries, said Gillerman. 

He noted that the US, Canada, Australia, and many European countries boycotted the ICJ hearing and submitted written briefs to the court challenging its jurisdiction in the matter. 

The Palestinians, said Gillerman, are trying to dramatize a decision that should never have been given in the first place. 

It is just a pity that the United Nations is allowing the Palestinians to waste its time and resources on things which may derail the peace process, because it will divert attention from the real large overall pictures where Israel is disengaging from Gaza and the West Bank, he said. 

We feel that the ICJ and the whole international justice system has been taken for a ride and abused by the Palestinians, and it has really inadvertently become just another organ of the Untied Nations for Israel bashing... which is a shame, because we respect the ICJ, said Gillerman. 

But Shreim said, I think most of the international community respects the court as the highest judicial body of the United Nations, and they do not want to undermine or discredit the court. We are confident that we will pass the resolution by an overwhelming majority, said Shreim. 

Israel cannot be a country above the law. If they want others to respect the law, they should start by doing so themselves, he added. 

Shreim said he is hopeful that Israel will decide on its own to comply with the ICJ ruling by halting construction and taking down portions of the fence that have been built in the territories. If not, he said, it is the role of the UN and its member states to do so. 

With AP