Global Policy Forum

By Edith Lederer

Arab and developing countries called on the world's nations Tuesday to condemn Israel for "brutal assaults" on Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp and for blocking a U.N. fact-finding mission from looking into the fighting in the camp. "This is no time for moral ambivalence and double-standards," South Africa's U.N. Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, speaking on behalf of the Nonaligned Movement of developing countries, told the start of an emergency special session of the 189-nation U.N. General Assembly on the failed fact-finding mission.

"The General Assembly must now stand against Israel's defiance of international humanitarian law and human rights," he said. "Israel seems to have developed a culture of acting with impunity when it comes to the United Nations. The message that must emanate from this assembly must be that no individual member of the United Nations can be treated differently from the rest." A draft resolution introduced by South Africa on behalf of the Nonaligned Movement and Sudan on behalf of Arab nations asks Secretary-General Kofi Annan to submit a report on events in Jenin and other Palestinian cities. An initial proposal that this be done in two weeks was eliminated.

The revised draft before Tuesday's session also softened language originally calling for condemnation of the alleged "atrocities" committed by Israel. Now, in an apparent attempt to get wider support, the text condemns "the brutal assaults committed by the Israeli occupying forces."

But U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte told the General Assembly that Middle East peace could not be advanced through "one-side resolutions" and "unbalanced rhetoric" that only condemn one side. The only way to peace is through international efforts like the one being promoted now by the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, he said, announcing that he would vote against the resolution. Annan called off the fact-finding mission to the Jenin camp Thursday after he tried for 13 days to overcome Israeli objections to the group's mandate and composition.

U.N. human rights chief Mary Robinson said it was important to investigate allegations of atrocities. "There is a worry when the military forces of a country appear to be able to act with impunity since the fact-finding mission could not go," she told reporters in London. After Annan announced that he was disbanding the fact-finding mission, the Palestinians and their Arab supporters demanded that the Security Council condemn Israel, but the council - whose veto-wielding members are the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China - was divided and took no action.

Arab and developing nations then decided to take the proposal to the General Assembly, where support for the Palestinians is stronger than in the more powerful Security Council. The assembly's resolutions cannot be vetoed but are not legally binding. The Palestinians claim that Israeli troops committed atrocities - and possibly a massacre - during the April attack, an accusation Israel vehemently denies, saying its forces tried to minimize civilian casualties.

The Palestinian U.N. observer, Nasser Al-Kidwa, told the emergency session Israel was guilty of the "willful killings of civilians, extrajudicial executions" and the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields. He reiterated that the Palestinians will press for senior Israeli commanders to be prosecuted for war crimes. Al-Kidwa accused the United States of shielding Israel from any "serious action" by the Security Council. He also warned that Israel must not be allowed to link "the criminal acts it is committing against our people" to the international fight against terrorism that received global support after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Israel's U.N. Ambassador Yehuda Lancry told the General Assembly that 56 Palestinians died in a fierce gunbattle in Jenin, the vast majority of them Palestinian gunmen. Defending Israeli objections to the fact-finding mission, he said it wasn't going to collect facts but rather act like "a trial." "This session is unnecessary and a waste of time for the delegates," Lancry said.

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