Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2002, pages 52-53

United Nations Report

 

Security Council Resolution 1397 Accepts Palestinian State, But Sharon Does Not

By Ian Williams

When the U.S. agreed March 12 to Security Council Resolution 1397, calling for an end to all acts of violence (thus including the Israelis), it was seen as a huge step forward. Washington’s policy for years has been to keep the U.N. out of the problem while American and Israeli diplomats, under the guise of equal negotiations, bullied the Palestinians into giving up most of their rights guaranteed by international law.

While the resolution was weakly even-handed between the aggressor and the victim, the Palestinians welcomed it because, for the first time, a Security Council resolution accepted a Palestinian state. Hitherto, while resolutions were clear that the Israelis were “occupying” the territories, there was legal ambiguity about “from whom” they were being occupied. The resolution also endorsed the Saudi peace plan. There is no doubt that in the future it will be cited, along with Resolutions 242 and 338, as a foundation for a peace plan—if ever there is peace, since Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, of course, took no notice.

The Arab delegations returned March 30 and secured, almost to their surprise, U.S. support for Resolution 1402, which explicitly condemned both the suicide bombings and Israel’s military attack on Arafat’s headquarters and called for Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian cities. At American insistence, no words indicating immediacy were put in the resolution. In protest against its even-handedness, the Syrian boycotted the vote—although the Palestinians, realizing the precedent the U.S. delegation was setting, welcomed it.

Once again, however, Sharon and—one hopes—his co-indictees at some future war crimes tribunal took no notice. They claimed that since the resolution did not mention a time frame it did not matter. What’s more, someone in the U.S. administration actually was telling them that as well.

By Thursday, reports of what the IDF was doing in Palestine were so shocking—and, perhaps, reports of Arab and world reaction so disturbing—to the White House version of foreign policy planning that on April 4 a new resolution, 1403, “demanded” implementation of 1402 “without delay.” President Bush echoed the call from the White House.

As the American-supplied and -financed helicopter gunships pounded Jenin into an action replay of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Arab group came back for another resolution. This time, however, the Americans persuaded them to wait in order to give Secretary of State Colin Powell’s mission to the Mideast time. Another resolution would just give the Israelis something else to ignore, Washington pointed out. The U.S. also said it would veto any new resolution, which certainly would weaken Powell’s diplomacy.

It is a weird form of suicide diplomacy in which the world’s only superpower deploys the threat of weakening its own envoy. Most of the ambassadors at the U.N. have a lot of regard for Colin Powell, however, since he clearly represents the sane wing of American policy. It is difficult for any bird to fly on only one wing, however—which is doubtless why it took so long for the secretary of state actually to arrive in Ramallah. And why, when he did, all his public criticisms were addressed to President Yasser Arafat on his need to stop terrorism.

European diplomats privately thought it would be a good idea for Washington to muzzle Sharon.

On Friday, April 12, a girl from Jenin killed herself and six Israelis. This should have been no surprise to anyone who saw what Sharon was doing to the West Bank city. Powell’s response, however, was to refuse to meet Arafat until the latter denounced the suicide bombing.

If ever anyone had an alibi against complicity in terrorism, it had to be Arafat, effectively imprisoned in his headquarters by the Israeli forces. American politicians, however, apparently are susceptible to Sharon’s infectious psychopathic irrationality.

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