The international community’s increased acceptance of Israel in recent years is likely to be tested in the United Nations General Assembly, which opened its session this week.
Advances in the Middle East peace process began to erode the anti-Israel atmosphere in the international body in the past three years. But the new Netanyahu government’s more hard-line posture has sown doubt and fears among Arab nations.
As evidence, Arab foreign ministers in Cairo last weekend threatened to halt normalization of ties with Israel unless there is progress in the peace process.
Some worry that hard-won gains by Israel will be reversed in this General Assembly session as a result.
“Israel is going to have a tougher time in the General Assembly this year,” said Harris Schoenberg, director of B’nai B’rith’s U.N. affairs and executive director of the Coordinating Board of Jewish Organizations, a U.N. non- governmental organization.
Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy was expected to use his speech to the General Assembly and meetings with foreign ministers early next month to build international confidence by making explicit his government’s commitment to peace.
“The commitment to the peace process is bipartisan in Israel,” said David Peleg, Israel’s acting ambassador to the United Nations. “The [new] government of Israel is as committed to the promotion and expansion of peace” as the previous government.
“There is a different emphasis,” he said, “but the commitment is the same.”
But it may be a hard sell in the international body.
The permanent Palestinian observer at the United Nations, Nasser Al-Kidwa, made clear he expects a change in atmosphere as a result of the new government’s policies.
“The U.N.’s support for the peace process and the agreements [with the Palestinians] will not diminish,” but it is “only normal” that “there will be a more contentious atmosphere.”
The Netanyahu government “openly calls for renegotiating parts of the agreements” and has “clearly indicated it is not abiding by timetables” for implementation already agreed to, said Al-Kidwa. He cited as an example the long-delayed redeployment of Israeli troops from most of the West Bank town of Hebron.
“We expect the General Assembly to take action” about the “many violations we believe are being committed by the government and its general lack of compliance,” Al-Kidwa said.
Al-Kidwa singled out the Netanyahu government’s decision to resume “settlement activity,” which he deemed a violation of international law as well as the Israeli-Palestinian agreements.
Said Peleg: “We hope the 51st General Assembly will continue with the trend we’ve seen in the previous two or three [sessions] of adjusting its resolutions to the situation on the ground in the Middle East and progress in the peace process.”
He said Israel would “regret it” if Arab delegations choose to use the United Nations “as an arena to put political pressure on the government of Israel.”
Some well-placed non-Israeli sources believe that the diplomatic progress Israel has made in recent years is strong and deep enough to withstand some of the challenges it is bound to face.
Meanwhile, Israel advocates want to see an end to the now-routine resolutions dealing with the Middle East, on matters ranging from Jerusalem to the Golan Heights to Jewish settlements.
“There is no justification for the General Assembly to adopt resolutions which deal with issues being discussed bilaterally,” Peleg said.
Israel advocates are also calling for the dissolution of General Assembly committees and divisions in the U.N. Secretariat that they say serve as propaganda instruments for the Palestine Liberation Organization and are anachronistic.
“There is no need for those organizations created by the General Assembly in the ’70s as part of the political warfare by the Arabs before the peace process” was launched, Peleg said.
The Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices in the Territories makes no sense “at a time when most of the Palestinian population is being administered by the Palestinian Authority,” he said.
Critics also single out the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, which, said Schoenberg, “spends $6 million a year to propagandize for the PLO.”
Both Schoenberg and Peleg have called for the money to be spent in direct aid to the Palestinians.
Al-Kidwa said that while the move to eliminate these committees gained some currency as the peace process advanced, in the new “circumstances, nobody is going to listen to these arguments.”
Peleg said he also plans in the current session to continue efforts to secure a place for Israel in a regional group.
Israel is the only U.N. member without such a seat, which is a prerequisite to serving on key U.N. bodies, including the Security Council.
Some Arab members of the Asian group, which is Israel’s rightful place, have blocked Israel’s membership.
Israel therefore has been pressing for temporary membership in the Western European and Others Group, but sources say resistance remains, particularly from Britain and France.
Meanwhile, Schoenberg, director of the Advisory Committee for an Effective United Nations, is wary of a deteriorating political climate at the United Nations.
He said he fears that the United States has a relative lack of commitment to the international body, which already has begun to trigger a rise in influence by extremist anti-U.S. and anti-Israel members.
He noted that the United States has been doing little about its more than $1 billion in arrears. And he said despite pledges to use the United Nations as a high-profile instrument to promote peace, justice and democracy, the White House is being “intimidated” by an “aggressively anti-multilateral Republican Congress.”
But the United States is up to date with its current U.N. bills, say officials, with the bulk of its debt coming from the cost of the Bosnia and Somalia peacekeeping exercises. The president has submitted a five-year payment plan to Congress, where it remains under review.
Regarding the General Assembly climate on Middle Eastern issues, a U.S. official who insisted on anonymity said, “The U.N. is finally catching up with the realities in the region.”
He said, “Israeli diplomats have been more and more involved in personal and professional relationships with the widest range of diplomats,” as well as more involved in a host of U.N. bodies and programs.
And, “while there is much work to do,” U.N. resolutions are “more balanced and supportive,” he said, “The United States is working to accelerate” that trend, he added.
For his part, Peleg said he sees no evidence pointing to a flagging commitment by the United States to Israel in the United Nations.
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