Security Council to Consider Censuring Israel for Expulsions

The Security Council will meet here Thursday to consider a resolution condemning Israel for the June 29 deportation of eight Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Johanan Bein, Israel’s acting ambassador to the United Nations, is expected to defend Israel’s actions at the Security Council meeting, which was requested by Syria.

A draft of the resolution calls for the Security Council to “deplore” the deportations. It asks Israel to ensure the deportees’ “safe and immediate return” and to cease any other deportations of civilians.

There appears to be a chance that the United States, which has recently vetoed anti-Israel resolutions in the Security Council, may either support this resolution or abstain.

The U.S. government has made no secret of its opposition to deportations of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and its stand was reflected in two Security Council votes last year.

In January 1988, the United States supported a Security Council resolution demanding that Israel refrain from such deportations.

Several days later, Israel deported four Palestinian activists from the West Bank. The Security Council condemned Israel for the move, and the United States abstained from that vote, rather than using its veto to block the resolution.

The draft of the resolution now under consideration reaffirms both of these Security Council resolutions, in what appears to be a tactic to win U.S. support.

The U.S. vote this time will “depend on the language of the resolution,” said a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations.

The spokesman said that the fact that the meeting was postponed from Wednesday to Thursday indicates that the resolution’s language was undergoing some fine-tuning.

The resolution’s sponsors are Algeria, Colombia, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Nepal, Senegal and Yugoslavia.