Israel and the UN
UN Resolution 799, adopted on December 18, "strongly condemns" Israel's deportation of more than 400 Palestinians to a desolate strip of land in southern Lebanon. Article 4 of the resolution reads: "The Security Council Demands that Israel, the occupying power, ensure the safe and immediate return to the occupied territories of all those deported".
UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said there was a growing perception throughout the international community that the Security Council, by not pressing for Israeli compliance with the resolution, did not attach equal importance to the enforcing of all UN decisions.
Boutros-Ghali is now calling for "whatever measures are required" to force Israel's compliance with UN Resolution 799.
Israel has deported more than 2500 Palestinians since 1967, and the UN Security Council has adopted 11 resolutions since 1980 on these deportations. Israel has ignored all of them. The long-standing Resolution 242, which calls on Israel to withdraw from the territories seized in 1967, is likewise disregarded.
This lack of action on UN Security Council resolutions applying to Israel stands in sharp contrast to those applicable to Iraq. Whereas UN messages are carried humbly to Israel by a long line of special envoys, Iraq receives them under the wing of a US Tornado. The hypocrisy of the UN Security Council is plain for all to see.
International law subjects the Israeli occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem to the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in the Time of War. Deportation is a grave breach of the convention. Grave breaches are considered war crimes.
Further, the 1945 Charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg defined deportation as a war crime and a crime against humanity.
Now the Israeli Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court, has upheld the legality of the deportations under Israeli law — declining the opportunity to beat a face-saving retreat.
The Israeli government is evidently confident of the US veto continuing to protect it. In fact, US "pressure" on Israel so far has consisted of the suggestion that Israel allow the Palestinians to return and then jail them! The Israeli prime minister is in no doubt: "It is unbelievable that the US would uphold sanctions", he states.
The UN Security Council, with its five permanent members all with the right of veto, is an undemocratic fraud. The UN needs to be democratised if it is to have any credible role in world politics. That means abolishing both the Security Council and the right of veto; and it means safeguarding the sovereignty of all nations, not just the of the powerful.