The UN General Assembly was to take up yesterday a draft resolution demanding that Israel obey a World Court ruling and tear down its West Bank wall, but diplomats say said a vote may not come until next week.week. Arab states want broad support for the resolution drafted by Palestinian UN observer Nasser al-Kidwa.
But officials of the 25-nation EU are unhappy with the text as now written and will not be pushed into a decision. Al-Kidwa and other Arab envoys have been meeting all week with diplomats from the Netherlands, the current EU president, to discuss what changes Europe would need to vote "yes" yesterday's emergency session of the 191-nation assembly.
Search for consensus
PHOTO: AFP
But it took EU delegates until Thursday afternoon to reach consensus within their own ranks on a list of demands. That paper was sent off to EU capitals for overnight approval.
"We will not be rushed. So it's not realistic to expect a vote [yesterday]," said a key EU diplomat involved in the talks.
Arab envoys have painted the vote as a referendum on the force of international law, while Israel and its chief ally, the US, argue that the World Court, known formally as the International Court of Justice, ignored legitimate Israeli security concerns and was undermining the peace process.
Only temporary
Israel says the wall -- a combination of razor-tipped fencing and concrete that is still under construction -- is temporary and is needed to keep out suicide bombers.
Palestinians see it as a land grab that would thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Even without the EU, UN diplomats said the Palestinian resolution would easily win a majority of those voting.
But Arab states hoped to keep abstentions and "no" votes to a minimum, to bolster an expected later plea for sanctions against Israel in case the Jewish state ignores the ruling, as it has vowed to do, on grounds it is only an advisory opinion.
In addition, the EU bloc would bring along with it as many as 25 other countries, diplomats said.
"It's all about the EU, which is considered the moral compass at the United Nations," said an envoy close to the talks.
Not a victory
"When the Palestinians attract primarily Arab and African votes, they don't regard this as a victory," the envoy said.
The UN assembly agreed to meet after the court, the top UN legal forum, said in an "advisory opinion" last week that the planned 600km barrier violates international law by cutting into West Bank land occupied and dotted with settlements by Israel since the 1967 Middle East War.
The Palestinian draft would affirm "the illegality of any territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force" and would demand that Israel dismantle the wall and pay reparations for any damage caused by its construction.
Geneva convention
It would also ask Switzerland, as keeper of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to convene a meeting of parties to the treaty to ensure it was being observed.
The 1949 pact deals with the protection of civilians in time of war. A key provision bars governments from building settlements on land acquired by force.
EU diplomats want the draft to cite Israeli security needs and the obligations of both sides under the road map to peace set out by the quartet of Middle East mediators -- the US, EU, UN and Russia.
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
RSS