Arab States Want UN Children Meeting to Rap Israel
May 09, 2002 08:05 PM ET
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Palestinians threatened on Thursday to knock a gala U.N. children's summit off track by injecting Israel's treatment of young Palestinians into the proceedings and challenging Israel's credentials.
A draft General Assembly resolution, introduced by 22 nations, including South Africa, Afghanistan, Cuba and Arab states, says children under Israeli occupation "remain deprived of many basic rights" as a result of Israeli assaults on Palestinian cities, towns, villages and refugee camps.
In response, Israel's Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit used his General Assembly speech to accuse Palestinians of training youths to be suicide bombers. A U.S. official said the conference was the wrong place for a Middle East resolution.
It is not unusual for the Middle East conflict to be inserted into every conference at the United Nations but normally these arguments are in the context of a final declaration. At this session, language on occupied territories has been agreed, according to Carol Bellamy, the executive director of UNICEF, the U.N. Children's Fund.
No vote is expected until Friday. Diplomats said that if the resolution were sidelined, Arab delegates would insist the final document contain stronger language on Israeli actions.
But Richard Grenell, a spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said, "We are encouraging other nations to not allow this special session on children to be politicized and polarized on yet another U.N. debate on the Middle East."
MINISTER ASTONISHED
Departing from his prepared text, Israel's Sheetrit said he was "astonished" to hear of the resolution. Arab nations knew that "no automatic majority makes you right," he said.
"Everyone of you knows in their hearts who is to blame for the situation," he said, adding that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had rejected a peace plan worked out by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak "and now was betraying his own children."
"How come such young boys are coming to commit suicide?" he said, listing names of youths who died in suicide attacks against Israelis.
Answering his question, Sheetrit said there was a strong incitement by television and in school books. "Show me a map in any text book in the Palestinian Authority, one map of the Middle East in which Israel appears and I give you a price. So how come no one speaks about it?"
Earlier Thursday, Palestinian delegate Dr. Emile Jarjou'i, without mentioning the resolution, told the assembly, "Children are not interested in politics. They want to live, play, go to school, travel and explore their world. But they cannot!"
"In the last 19 months, Israeli military forces that have acted upon the directives of their government have indiscriminately killed hundreds of Palestinian children. These children were killed while they lay asleep in their beds, in the arms of their mothers, while playing and going to school by Israeli military forces," Jarjou'i said.
ISRAEL'S CREDENTIALS CHALLENGED
Palestinians also threatened to challenge Israel's credentials at the summit on children's rights, which ends on Friday. They want the U.N. General Assembly to make sure Israel cannot represent the West Bank or Gaza, diplomats reported.
"The Palestinian draft resolution and their intention to dispute our credentials are another attempt to hijack an international conference," said Mordecai Yedid, deputy director of the Israeli Foreign Ministry's U.N. and International Organizations department.
Israel says the 1993 Oslo accords on the Middle East put it in charge of foreign and security affairs while the status of the territories were being negotiated. However, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has opposed the Oslo agreements negotiated by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
"So to try to challenge us about this is to call into question the very soul of the negotiations in Oslo," Israeli U.N. Ambassador Yehuda Lancry said.
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