NEW YORK — As violence between Israelis and Palestinians has escalated over the past month, so, too, has U.N. pressure on Israel.
Aided by their diplomatic and bureaucratic allies throughout the U.N. system, the Palestinians have stepped up rhetorical attacks from all directions against the Jewish state, advocates for Israel say.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Tuesday demanded that Israel end what he described — for the first time, aides said — as its “illegal occupation” of portions of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
In a surprise move, the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution Tuesday night calling for a Palestinian state next to Israel. It was the first time the council explicitly has endorsed the idea of a Palestinian state.
The resolution was sponsored by the United States and was approved by a 14-0 vote, with Syria abstaining.
Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority welcomed the resolution. Nabil Abu Irdeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, said, “The whole world is behind a Palestinian state.”
Israeli officials, for their part, noted that the text “demands immediate cessation of all acts of violence, including all forms of terror, provocation, incitement and destruction.”
Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Yehuda Lancry, termed the resolution balanced, “which is quite a novelty for Israel,” he said.
Yet Jewish observers still are braced for next week’s reconvening of the historically anti-Israel U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva — the first such session since the United States lost its seat last year to other Western countries.
“It could be a difficult session” for Israel without its trusty defender, an American official said.
But the slew of anti-Israel resolutions anticipated at the Geneva forum will, at most, be symbolic victories that fuel the Palestinian-led campaign against Israel, observers say.
Of greater import, they say, is what happens at the Security Council, because of its legally binding authority. The council is the institution responsible for ensuring global peace and security.
Indeed, it was in a speech to the Security Council that Annan criticized both the Israelis and Palestinians, saying he was disturbed that “escalation has been met with escalation with little — in some cases no — regard for innocent civilian lives.”
But he seemed to concentrate a bit more on Israeli responsibility for the bloodshed.
Annan decried the “increasing use of heavy weaponry by Israel in civilian areas” against those “already subjected to severe physical and economic hardships.”
Actions like these “further fuel the fires of hatred, despair and extremism among Palestinians,” he said.
“You have the right to live in peace and security within secure internationally recognized borders,” he said to Israel. “But you must end the illegal occupation.”
As for the Palestinians, Annan said, they “have played their full part in the escalating cycle of violence, counter-violence and revenge” and described their acts of terror and suicide bombings as “morally repugnant.”
“You have the inalienable right to a viable state within secure internationally recognized borders,” he said.
“But the deliberate targeting of civilians is doing immense harm to your cause, by weakening international support, and making Israelis believe that it is their existence as a state, and not the occupation, that is being opposed.”
Lancry downplayed Annan’s remarks, telling Reuters that Israel had already agreed in principle to a Palestinian state, but that negotiations were required to get there.
Hours after Annan’s speech, the United States introduced its resolution on Palestinian statehood. U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said the surprise move was intended to give momentum to the peace mission being launched this week by U.S. Middle East envoy Gen. Anthony Zinni.
The text expresses “a vision of a region where two states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side within secure and recognized borders.”
The resolution was not without its detractors, however.
Syria’s U.N. envoy dismissed it as “a weak resolution that fails to deal with the root cause of the problem — namely, the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.”
Hamas and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine called the resolution “incomplete,” because it did not call for the removal of Israeli troops and settlements from the West Bank and Gaza Strip and ignored Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s alleged “bloody and tragic crimes” against the Palestinians.
Several of the Security Council’s 15 members, especially Syria, are said to be champing at the bit to enter the Middle East fray. Many eyes are turned to an Arab summit scheduled for March 27-28 in Beirut, which is expected to focus on a Saudi proposal to grant Israel diplomatic relations with Arab countries in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal to pre-Six-Day War borders.
Depending on the summit’s outcome, Palestinian supporters are expected to bring to the Security Council a resolution that will either reiterate a call to send international monitors to the disputed territories or will demand a complete Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders — or both.
In either case, Israel will resist.