Arabs criticise Israeli UN resolution

The Israeli resolution, pending in the assembly’s Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee, mirrors an Egyptian-sponsored resolution adopted by the panel last week that demands Israel should protect Palestinian children.

Palestinian envoy Nasir al-Kidwa said on Monday Arab delegates, meeting at UN headquarters, concluded the Israeli draft had been written “as a bad joke” and should be voted down.

“Frankly, we were not amused,” al-Kidwa told reporters after the meeting. “This is an anti-Palestinian resolution, much more than it is a pro-Israeli children resolution.”

“The Europeans say they will abstain. I can’t see anybody
voting in favor of this,” he said. “We hope they (the Israelis)
will wake up and forget about this.”

Israel has been the target of hundreds of critical resolutions at the United Nations. The measure on Israeli children is the first it has introduced in more than a quarter century.

Arabs agree Palestinian children are deprived of their rights

It expresses concern “about the continuous grave threat to Israeli children from Palestinian terrorism” and “demands that the Palestinian Authority respect its obligations to undertake effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror.”

Palestinian children

The Egyptian draft resolution was passed last Thursday by a vote of 88-4, with 58 abstentions. The United States, Israel, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands voted against it, while the 15 European Union nations and Canada were among those
abstaining.

Israel’s deputy UN ambassador, Arye Mekel, told the committee last week that the resolution was one-sided because “we believe that all the world’s children are deserving of equal protection, including Israeli and Palestinian children.”

But al-Kidwa said the situation of Palestinian children was unique in that “all of them are collectively deprived of every single right in the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” a global treaty that came into force in 1990.