The United Nations
Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) on April 15 condemned Israel for its “mass
killing” of Palestinians and its construction of illegal settlements in
the occupied territories. The United States government was the only commission
member to oppose all four resolutions condemning Israel's repression and
calling for an immediate halt to settlement activity in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip.
The US delegate charged that the criticism of Israel was “unfair and one-sided”. Israel has been regularly condemned by the 53-member UN human rights body. On this motion Germany, Canada, Australia and Peru joined the US in voting against. The resolutions followed heated arguments earlier in the UNHRC's annual session in Geneva, during which Palestinian delegate Nabil Ramlawi highlighted Israel's use of killings and torture, which he described as “worse than the practices of Nazism”.
A joint Arab-African motion condemning Israel for “mass killing” of Palestinians was passed by 33 votes to five, with 15 abstentions. The tough seven-page resolution criticised “the gross violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, in particular, acts of extra-judicial killing, closures, collective punishments, arbitrary detentions, the shelling of Palestinian residential districts from warplanes, tanks and Israeli battleships, the conducting of incursions into towns and camps and the killing of men, women and children there.”
A motion from the European Union voiced “grave concern” over ongoing settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territory and condemned Israel's plan to build a unilateral separation wall, which will entail the annexation of more Palestinian land. This motion, which also condemned Israel's restriction of Palestinian freedom of movement, was passed with only the US voting against.
[Form the Palestine Media Centre.]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, April 23, 2003.
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