A panel of Arab states at the United Nations accused Israel of establishing “an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole” in a new report, to the anger of Israeli and American leaders.
“[T]he extreme gravity of the charge requires prompt action,” the U.N.’s Economic Commission for Western Asia, a body comprised of 18 Arab countries, concluded in a newly-released report. “While urging swift action to oppose and end this apartheid regime, the authors of this report urge as a matter of highest priority that authoritative bodies be requested to review its findings.”
That review will be hostile to the report, if U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley gets her way. Haley, who described the U.N. Security Council’s condemnation if Israeli settlement construction “a kick in the gut” during her confirmation hearing, called for the U.N. to withdraw the report entirely.
“The United States stands with our ally Israel and will continue to oppose biased and anti-Israel actions across the U.N. system and around the world,” she said.
UNESCWA declared “the strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian people is the principal method by which Israel imposes an apartheid regime” by treating Palestinians in different regions differently. The description of that varying treatment culminates in a denunciation of Israel’s refusal of a “right of return” for the descendants of Palestinians who fled to neighboring Arab countries in after the wars of 1948 and 1967.
“The refusal of the right of return plays an essential role in the apartheid regime by ensuring that the Palestinian population in Mandate Palestine does not grow to a point that would threaten Israeli military control of the territory and/or provide the demographic leverage for Palestinian citizens of Israel to demand (and obtain) full democratic rights, thereby eliminating the Jewish character of the State of Israel,” the report said.
The report was written by two Americans, including Richard Falk, who was appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council to serve as ‘special rapporteur’ on human rights issues in Palestinian territories. Haley attacked Falk, who has compared Israel’s “treatment of Palestinians with the criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity,” to impeach the credibility of the Arab states’ report.
“That such anti-Israel propaganda would come from a body whose membership nearly universally does not recognize Israel is unsurprising,” she said. “That it was drafted by Richard Falk, a man who has repeatedly made biased and deeply offensive comments about Israel and espoused ridiculous conspiracy theories, including about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, is equally unsurprising. The United Nations Secretariat was right to distance itself from this report, but it must go further and withdraw the report altogether.”
