U.S. threatens to veto UN resolution on int'l force in PA areas

Faced with calls for an armed force in Palestinian territories and a probe of the devastated Jenin refugee camp, the United Nations Security Council grappled with an Arab-initiated resolution the United States threatened to veto. But this time U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Negroponte said: "We think the council has done enough."

Britain on Friday reverted its initiative for a resolution on the establishment of an international committee that would investigate the events that took place during the IDF military operation in the Jenin refugee camp. The decision was apparently made after it was made clear that the U.S. opposed the initiative, which was proposed by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

The 15-member council was set to consider the proposals Friday despite the fact that neither the United States nor Arab nations have approved them.

The Arab draft calls for a "third party" presence in Palestinian territory, demands an immediate Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian cities and an end to Israel's siege of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

It also wants a UN investigation into alleged "massacres" and destruction of the Jenin refugee camp, the most violent of Israel's incursions in the West Bank over the past two weeks in search of "terrorist networks."

The British proposal was to have eliminate most of the demands except for a UN investigation of Jenin and was to have called for Israel to honor previous council resolutions.

The Security Council approved three resolutions in March and early April demanding an immediate cease-fire and an Israeli troop withdrawal "without delay." It also called for a peace pact culminating in a Palestinian state.

The United States voted for all three after softening language that Arab nations had proposed.

Annan continues push for armed intervention Despite known Israeli and U.S. positions, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed to the council on Thursday for authorization of a "robust" international force in Palestinian territory to halt the violence that escalated two weeks ago when Israeli troops began raids.

But Aaron Jacob, Israel's deputy UN ambassador, immediately said "no" and White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said "the president thinks the purpose of America's military is to fight and win wars."

Fleischer and Negroponte said again that any intervention needed the consent of both parties. So far Israel has only agreed to U.S. civilians for the monitoring of a cease-fire.

Nevertheless, speakers from some 30 nations, mostly from developing countries, told the council to move immediately during a public meeting on Thursday that resumes on Friday.

Elaborating on a concept he voiced in Geneva last week, Annan said an armed force would be in Israel's interest, and would put "an international spotlight on any extremist Palestinian groups that try to undermine a cease-fire by continuing to engage in terrorism."

The force would not be organized by the United Nations but by a "coalition of the willing." The council, Annan said, should authorize such an operation under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which allows the use of force.

But he said a multinational force could only succeed if it were part of a peace process leading to long-term security for Israel, a Palestinian state and the withdrawal of Israeli settlements from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

On the Jenin raids, Annan told reporters he would approve an investigation but his first priority was to help the living.

He called on Israel to allow humanitarian workers full access to the devastated refugee camp, describing the destruction as "horrific."

UN officials visiting the camp found "people digging out corpses from the rubble with bare hands," Annan said.

"Meanwhile no major emergency rescue operation has been allowed to begin. The destruction is massive and the impact on the civilian population is devastating," he said.

This is long but very worthwhile. From yesterday's Wall Street Journal.

The UN's Refugees

By MICHAEL RUBIN

JERUSALEM -- On Monday, France, Belgium and four other European Union members endorsed a U.N. Human Rights Commission resolution condoning "all available means, including armed struggle" to establish a Palestinian state. Hence, six European Union members and the rights commission now join the 57 nations of the Islamic Conference in legitimizing suicide bombers. By their logic of moral equivalence, terror is justifiable because its root cause is Israel's occupation. That Palestinian terror predates occupation, or that suicide bombings became a tactic of choice only after the initiation of the Oslo process, is too inconvenient to mention.

Unfortunately the U.N. goes beyond giving rhetorical support for terrorism. In a variety of ways, its agencies have been complicit in Middle Eastern terror. Start with the refugee camps.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees began operation in 1950. The establishment of Israel, and its simultaneous invasion by five Arab states, resulted in the creation of approximately 600,000 Palestinian refugees. An equivalent number of Jews fled their homes in Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, and other Arab countries, and settled in Israel.

As disruptive as it was, the number of Jewish and Arab refugees pales in comparison to that created by the partition of India. There are today more than 100 million descendants of the original 15 million Indian and Pakistani refugees. The U.N. remained outside the conflict, and provided no political or economic incentive for refugees not to settle. Too bad the same restraint has not characterized the behavior of the U.N. and Arab states in the Middle East.

As it is, UNRWA and the Arab League hold Palestinian refugees in limbo. UNRWA operates 27 refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, and another 32 camps in neighboring Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. It counts nearly four million Palestinians as refugees, including those whose grandparents never saw Palestine. (If U.N. High Commission for Refugees' criteria are applied, the figure is significantly lower). In 2001 alone, UNRWA spent $310 million on the camps.

It is these camps that have been at the center of violence between Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen. On Feb. 28, following a series of Palestinian terror attacks in Israel (including an attack on a young girl's Bat Mitzvah celebration), Israeli forces rolled into the Jenin and Balata refugee camps. They remained for three days. Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer explained the Israeli strategy: "We are interested in one thing only, to stop and disrupt this wave of suicide attacks. We intend to go in and get out."

U.N. officials were instantaneous in their condemnation. Kofi Annan called on Israel "to withdraw immediately." High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson labeled the incursions "in total disregard of international human rights." On March 21, a UNRWA spokesman called on Israel to compensate the agency for damage to its refugee camps.

Israel's raids did damage the camps. But as a result of the operation, Israel uncovered illegal arms caches, bomb factories, and a plant manufacturing the new Kassam-2 rocket, designed to reach Israeli population centers from the West Bank and Gaza. Confronted with evidence of illegal Palestinian mines, mortars, and missiles, no U.N. official questioned how it was that bomb factories could exist in U.N.-managed refugee camps. Either the U.N. officials were unaware of the bomb factories -- a fact which would suggest utter incompetence -- or, more likely, the U.N. employees simply turned a blind eye.

Unfortunately, UNRWA is not alone in reinforcing the U.N.'s reputation as an organization incapable of fighting terror. On May 24, 2000, Israel unilaterally pulled back from southern Lebanon, a withdrawal the U.N. certified to be complete. Terror did not end, though. On October 7, 2000, Hezbollah guerillas crossed the border and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers (including one Israeli Arab), all of whom they subsequently killed. Observers from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon videotaped the scene of the kidnapping, including the getaway cars, and some guerillas.

Inexplicably, they then hid the videotape. Questioned by Israeli officials, Terje Roed-Larsen, the U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, chided Israel for "questioning the good faith of senior United Nations officials." When after eight months the U.N. finally admitted to possessing the tape, officials balked at showing it to the Israeli government since that might "undermine U.N. neutrality." The fact that U.N. observers protected and defended guerillas who crossed a U.N.-certified border, using cars with U.N. license plates while under the cover of U.N. flags, was apparently of no consequence to UNIFIL. Pronouncements aside, U.N. moral equivalency in practice dictates that terrorists are equal to states. Fighting terror compromises U.N. neutrality.

The U.N. has turned a blind eye to terror in Iraq as well. Throughout the spring and summer of 2001, a series of bomb explosions wracked the safe haven of northern Iraq. Kurdish authorities long suspected the complicity of certain U.N. drivers who crossed freely between the safe haven and Iraq proper. On July 19, 2001, Kurdish security arrested a Tunisian U.N. driver found in possession of explosives. A Yemeni national serving as deputy director of the U.N. mission in northern Iraq demanded that the driver be released before any investigation could be completed; he was. The U.N.'s reputation, in other words, trumps protecting innocents from Saddam Hussein's bombs.

The U.N. has a terrorism problem. Syria, a nation that hosts more terror groups than any other, sits on the Security Council. Along with Iran, Syria is a prime sponsor of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Just two months after Nasrallah declared that "Jews invented the legend of the Nazi atrocities" and that Israel was a "cancerous body in the region . . . (which) must be uprooted," Mr. Annan bestowed international legitimacy upon Nasrallah by agreeing to an unprecedented meeting.

U.N. officials can make all the high-sounding pronouncements they desire, but if the U.N. wishes to defuse regional tensions and signal that terrorism is not acceptable, then there must be no equivocation. Perhaps Mr. Annan can be forgiven for not being aware that U.N.-funded refugee camps housed arms factories, or for allowing U.N. complicity in terror cover-ups in Lebanon and Iraq. But in a Middle East where perception is more important than reality, Mr. Annan's silence is deafening and his moral equivalency is interpreted as a green light for terror. The main casualty is U.N. credibility.

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