For the second time in 12 days, Israel as well as Jewish organizations in the United States have expressed profound disappointment with a U.S. vote supporting a U.N. Security Council resolution.
The latest resolution, adopted unanimously Wednesday night, deplores Israel’s rejection of an Oct, 12 Security Council resolution that called on Israel to accept a fact-finding mission into the Oct. 8 fatal shootings on the Temple Mount. Wednesday’s vote urged the Jewish state to reconsider.
The latest resolution expressed “alarm” at Israel’s rejection of the earlier Security Council motion, which was backed by the United States.
The Israeli Cabinet flatly rejected that resolution and refused to receive or cooperate with a U.N. delegation.
Despite an implied threat of U.N. sanctions if Israel continued refusing to cooperate, officials here said there was no sign Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir would soften his position or reopen the issue in the Cabinet.
INQUIRY EXPECTED BY WEEKEND
Their anger was directed mainly at the United States, which only rarely in the past has joined in a U.N. rebuke of Israel.
Officials pointed out that the report of Israel’s own independent committee of inquiry into the killings is expected before the weekend. They maintained that the Security Council could have been persuaded to wait under threat of a U.S. veto.
There has been speculation that with publication of the report, which has been prepared by a three-member panel headed by a former chief of Mossad, a way might be found to bridge the gap between Jerusalem and the U.N. secretary-general’s mandate.
According to that view, the Israeli report could form the basis of the United Nation’s account, which the secretary-general is required to submit to the Security Council. The Israeli account might even pave the way for some form of U.N. mission or special emissary, it is believed.
That assumption is understood to have been contained in a personal letter President Bush reportedly sent to Shamir before the Security Council’s second vote, begging him to reconsider.
The prime minister’s close aid, Yossi Ben Aharon, sharply attacked the United States in an interview published here Thursday.
COALITION NEEDS WASHINGTON
“We are not prepared to pay the price to maintain the unity of the coalition that the United States has set up against Iraq,” Ben-Aharon said. “In our view, the Arab states in that coalition need Washington and not the other way around.”
Meanwhile, American Jewish organizations have lined up behind Israel.
“Today’s resolution of censure makes manifest once again the double standard that the United Nations employs in dealing with Israel,” Seymour Reich, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said Wednesday.
Others who voiced their support of Israel were the American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, the Institute for Public Affairs of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America and New York City Councilman Noach Dear.
(JTA staff writer Aliza Marcus at the United Nations contributed to this report.)
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
