Pinchas Eliav, Israel’s ambassador to U.N. European headquarters here, believes the Palestine Liberation Organization’s standing at the United Nations has just suffered a severe blow.
“The legend that the PLO always gets its way at the United Nations is now shattered,” Eliav told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Thursday.
He was referring to the annual conference of the International Labor Organization here, where an Arab-sponsored resolution condemning Israel for the alleged mistreatment of Palestinian workers was relegated to third place in the sequence of debate Wednesday.
The first two items, the environment and the international debt, are expected to take up the remaining two weeks of the ILO conference, which closes on June 28.
There is little chance that the Palestinian workers issue will reach the floor before then, ILO officials say.
Eliav said this development indicates that the U.N. agency is fed up with politicization and that the Palestinian issue is passe.
He noted that the United States helped Israel in this affair and that the Eastern bloc, led by the Soviet Union, did not press for debate on the Arab resolution.
High officials of the ILO confirm that an atmosphere of compromise favorable to Israel now prevails in the agency.
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