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Posted on 10/14/2003 11:31:06 PM PDT by priceofreedom
Oct. 14, 2003 Israel's security fence under fire at UN By MELISSA RADLER
Israel's security fence, dubbed the "racist colonial wall" and "expansionist conquest wall" by Arab envoys at the United Nations, is currently coming under harsh criticism by members of the UN Security Council.
At an open debate on a Syrian-sponsored draft resolution that deems the fence "illegal under relevant provisions of international law," and demands that it be "ceased and reversed," ambassador after ambassador has stated that in erecting the fence, Israel was over-reacting to terrorist attacks against its citizens. The fence's route, which runs within the West Bank in some areas, is being criticized as a unilateral action that will prevent a negotiated settlement and two-state solution.
"Normally one does not build walls on someone else's land, so the wall should be built on the Green Line or on Israel's territory," said British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, who also accused Israel of using "disproportionate force" in response to suicide attacks, which, he said, "fuels the cycle of violence."
Spanish ambassador Inocencio Arias similarly condemned the fence, lumping it together with house demolitions and settlements as illegal acts. "Nothing can justify terrorism," he said, but "these are all illegal activities, and what is worse, they are an activity which is increasingly harmful to any effort to bring peace to the region."
Much more severe condemnation came from the council's only Arab member, Syria, and a host of Arab ambassadors who signed up to address the open debate.
Calling Israel's actions in the West Bank "worse than colonization apartheid," the PLO's permanent observer to the UN, Nasser al-Kidwa, stated that Israel is using the threat of terror as an excuse to settle Jews on the West Bank. Before he spoke, he handed out pictures of the fence and a map of the fence's route to delegates, he said.
"Israel is committing an immense war crime against the Palestinian people in the magnitude of a crime against humanity," he said. "It is the biggest war crime of its kind in our contemporary history."
Syrian Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad was more specific on Israel's alleged source for justifying the fence as a self-defense measure: Hitler chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels' 'Big Lie' theory.
"Israel is indeed perpetrating war crimes and terrorism against Palestinian civilians, men, women and children," said Mekdad.
Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, who was the debate's second speaker, answered al-Kidwa's charges with references to international law that allow states to take defensive measures, Security Council resolution deeming the West Bank disputed territory and statistics and personal stories of Israeli victims of terror.
"Here we go again," he said at the start of his 20-minute speech. "In a pattern that is as familiar as it is distasteful, we have gathered for yet another meeting of this council, called to censure Israel for its measures to prevent terrorism rather than address the terrorism itself."
US Ambassador to the UN John Negroponte has said he will veto any Middle East resolution that does not condemn the terrorist groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade, and while he reiterated the Bush administration's concerns that the fence "not really consistent with our view of what the Middle East will one day have to look like," he urged council members to put the fence into perspective.
"Any resolution concerning the Middle East must take into account the larger picture, that of the current security situation, including the devastating suicide attacks that Israelis have had to endure over the past three years," said Negroponte.
Let's keep the Dem's on the run!
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