Israel Rebuffed in U.S. Vote for a Mideast Parley

The United States joined other members of the U.N. Security Council on Thursday in unanimously supporting the concept of an international peace conference at an appropriate time between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

It was the first time the United States has allowed any mention of a conference on the Middle East in the context of Security Council action. Israel has long opposed the concept of an international conference.

Israel vehemently denounced the council’s action, accusing it of “political apartheid” for continually singling it out.

The conference was mentioned in a non-binding presidential statement accompanying a resolution deploring Israel’s recent decision to resume deporting Palestinian civilians living in occupied territories. It was the third resolution against Israel since October.

Finland’s Ambassador Klaus Tornudd, who played a crucial behind-the-scenes role as mediator in intensive, sometimes bitter negotiations lasting more than six weeks, said:

“We hope that the step now unanimously taken by the Security Council will bring us closer not only to improved protection for the Palestinian civilians living under Israeli occupation but also to the process leading to the long overdue negotiations on a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

Nasser Kidwa, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s observer at the United Nations, said: “We believe what happened today is an important step in the right direction.”

The U.N. vote prompted an impassioned speech by Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Yoram Aridor. “No time is appropriate for the convening of a so-called international peace conference,” he said.

“The consequences of an international peace conference were underscored after Munich in 1938,” Aridor continued. “Today, Israel is the one singled out for special treatment. The idea is a tool for the imposition of a predetermined outcome. The only road to peace is through direct, face-to-face negotiations. We will not play a role in the resurrection of Munich.

“The blood of a Jew is not even worthy of a mention by the Security Council,” Aridor charged.

He bitterly referred to the stabbing deaths of three Israeli factory workers in the Tel Aviv suburb of Jaffa last week. The Muslim fundamentalist group known as Hamas has claimed responsibility for the slayings, sparking further expulsions of Palestinians by Israel from the occupied territories.

The resolution, which all 15 nations on the Security Council supported, called upon U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to make urgent new efforts to monitor the situation of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and to draw on U.N. resources in the area and elsewhere to accomplish this task.

The document asked the secretary general to submit his first progress report to the Security Council by the first week of March and to make regular reports every four months. By its language, the resolution guaranteed that the status of the Palestinians will be the subject of intense council scrutiny throughout 1991. And a refusal of Israel to cooperate with the U.N. monitoring effort could lead to further council action.

The resolution also provided for the secretary general, in cooperation with the International Red Cross, to further develop his idea of convening a meeting of the 164 nations that signed the Fourth Geneva Convention, covering the status of civilians in territories occupied during a war.

In a tacit rejection of Israel’s designation of Jerusalem as its capital, the resolution said the Security Council is “gravely concerned” about the deterioration of the situation in all the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem, “and at the violence and rising tension in Israel.”

Israel captured the eastern part of Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Middle East War and proclaimed the city its capital soon afterwards. Israel has held West Jerusalem since the founding of the Jewish state in 1948.

Thomas R. Pickering, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the Security Council that while the United States supported in general terms the resolution and the statement read by the council’s president, Yemen’s Ambassador Abdalla Ashtal, a number of elements in the text caused it concern. Pickering read a list of caveats.

“The council ought to be willing to say to the Palestinians that any use of violence to achieve their ends is plain wrong,” Pickering said. “We lament the continued violence, particularly in Israel, where innocent people have been the victims of numerous stabbings.”

The U.S. ambassador said that the Bush Administration’s position toward Israel has not changed and it is not recommending that an international conference on the Arab-Israeli conflict be held now. He said that despite his country’s support for the non-binding statement, Washington was not supporting a resolution in the council that would seek to convene such a conference.

Pickering said that the Bush Administration has “serious questions” whether a meeting of all the nations that signed the Fourth Geneva Convention “realistically can help to improve the condition of the Palestinians in the occupied territories.”

The ambassador said the United States regards the phrase “Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967” as merely demographically and geographically descriptive and not indicative of sovereignty.

The non-binding presidential statement--which carries less weight than a resolution adopted by the council--reaffirmed the determination of the Security Council to support an active negotiating process in which all relevant parties would participate, leading to a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

It said the council members agree that an international conference, at an appropriate time, properly structured, should facilitate efforts to achieve a negotiated settlement and lasting peace.

But underlining significant differences among council members, particularly on the part of the United States, it added:

“The members of the council are of the view that there is not unanimity as to when would be the appropriate time for such a conference.”

The presidential statement went to pains to separate the Arab-Israeli conflict from the Persian Gulf conflict, noting: “It is the view of the members of the council (that) the Arab-Israeli conflict is important and unique and must be addressed independently on its own merits.” Some Arab leaders, particularly Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, have demanded “linkage” between the two issues.

Pickering, in carefully crafted remarks after the vote, went further.

“Saddam Hussein has tried to link the idea of an international conference to his invasion of Kuwait,” the U.S. ambassador said, “and the council has deprived him of any satisfaction in this regard. Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait to benefit the Palestinians; he did so for his own self-aggrandizement.”

The vote came after more than six weeks of sporadic, sometimes acrimonious negotiations which were interrupted by the Security Council’s historic vote Nov. 29 authorizing war to oust Iraq from Kuwait if Hussein does not withdraw his forces by Jan. 15.

Holding the council presidency in November, the United States used both muscle and persuasion to postpone further consideration of the plight of Palestinians in territories occupied by Israel until the use-of-force resolution passed.

But with Yemen heading the Security Council in December, the Palestinian issue once again came to the fore.