NEW YORK — As the United Nations begins its three-month General Assembly this week, observers describe an improved climate for Israel, despite a resolution condemning Israel’s seige on Ramallah.
With much of the world focused on the possibility of a U.S.-led war against Iraq, attention has shifted away from the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. In addition, the groundbreaking stipulations by U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte in July — who said America would not support any Security Council resolution on the Middle East that doesn’t mention Palestinian terror — have thwarted many such efforts.
Finally, Jewish leaders contend that countries simply are tired of anti-Israel antics that distract from other pressing issues.
“I really think things have changed,” said Dina Siegel Vann, U.N. and Latin American affairs director for B’nai B’rith International. “I think there’s a better understanding of the conflict in many camps,” along with a “sense of fatigue” with the Palestinian agenda.
The Israeli-Palestinian crisis is simply a “lower priority” at this General Assembly than it has been in “a long, long time,” agreed Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
President Bush’s June 24 speech, demanding the ouster of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, “put the Palestinian Authority and Arafat in the terror camp” and dealt a blow to their “celebrity status,” Foxman said.
Yet new and old threats against Israel persist.
The 19 anti-Israel resolutions that pass each year in the General Assembly — more than are devoted to any other country– are likely to pass again.
A U.N.-sponsored conference with an “End the Occupation” theme, slated for later this month, is sure to be a forum for anti-Israel rhetoric.
Enemies of the Jewish state also may exploit the International Criminal Court, established recently under U.N. auspices, to try Israeli officials or settlers for war crimes.
Yet Israel has enjoyed some successes in recent months, beginning with a report on the April battle in the Jenin refugee camp that rejected charges that Israeli troops carried out a massacre.
Then the U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg featured little of the anti-Israel rhetoric that marred the World Conference Against Racism in Durban last year.
For the past year, the United Nations also has been seeking a greater role in the Middle East, joining the European Union, the United States and Russia in the diplomatic “Quartet” seeking to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace.
But critics say the United Nations is shooting itself in the foot by hosting a Sept. 23-24 conference organized by the U.N. Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.
The United Nations is trying to “regain the credibility of Israel and the Jewish world,” but “from the outset they are disqualifying themselves” by sponsoring such an event, Siegel Vann said.