By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
May 07, 2004
The United Nations General Assembly Thursday decided the Jews do not have a right to sovereignty over even one inch of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip – integral parts of their ancient, biblical homeland.
Instead, the world body declared, the land belongs to a group of people that has never before in history constituted a unique cultural entity or a sovereign nation – the Palestinian Arabs.
The resolution recognizing “Palestinian” sovereignty over these territories was introduced by the PA observer mission to the UN, and passed by a vote of 140-6.
That the PA is present at the UN at all is a violation of the “Oslo Accord,” which forbids the “Palestinians” from conducting foreign affairs.
In a twist that highlighted the UN’s hypocritical position vis-à-vis Israel, the General Assemby approval of the resolution came just one day after Secretary General Kofi Annan insisted that the outcome of the “peace” process should not be prejudiced by unilateral moves acceptable only to one side.
‘Palestine’ for the ‘Palestinians’
The Palestinian Arabs “have the right to self-determination and to sovereignty” over the Judean and Samarian heartland of Israel’s ancient homeland, as well as the Gaza Strip, where until the Arab massacres of 1929 a thriving Jewish community lived, according to the UN.
The General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a watered-down version of the “Palestinian sovereignty” resolution Thursday evening, in another example of the world body’s automatic majority against the Jewish state.
Israel, the United States and four Pacific island nations voted against.
The original draft of the resolution not only called for recognition of the “Palestinian” sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Gaza, but also said that Israel “has no sovereignty over any part of this territory.”
That line was removed in order to allow the 25-member European Union to vote in favor of the resolution.
General Assembly resolutions are non-binding.
A fictitious people
The Palestinian Arabs have never existed as a unique cultural entity or people group.
Nor has the region the Arabs now refer to as “Palestine” ever existed as a separate sovereign nation except under Israeli control.
Until 1948, the term “Palestinian” referred primarily to the Jews living in the British-ruled Palestine Mandate. The Arabs living in the region rejected the label, seeing themselves as part of larger Arab world.
Only after Israel’s rebirth did the Arabs begin to adopt the name “Palestinian” in order to propagate the idea that they had been a separate and unique nation prior to the “Zionist invasion.”
Hypocritical twist
Just one day before the General Assembly’s automatic anti-Israel majority ripped the Jewish homeland out of Israel’s hands, the Middle East Quartet – comprised of the US, EU, UN and Russia - had insisted neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians should take unilateral moves that would prejudice the outcome of final status negotiations.
The “Palestine” resolution “flies in the face” of the Quartet’s statement, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Gillerman told the General Assembly prior to the vote.
Furthermore, Gillerman said, the resolution “offers the Palestinian side an incentive to avoid negotiations.”
“After all, why bother with these difficult responsibilities, why fight terrorism when the [UN] is offering to circumvent the negotiations?”