With UN council
be the precursor to another bid for statehood by the Palestinians at the UN.
That might go some way to explaining the strength of the Israeli response. But it is also the flagrant hypocrisy: “One only had to listen to the Syrian representative speak about human rights at the council on Thursday to understand how detached from reality it is,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted by the Jerusalem Post as saying. He also noted that an activist from Hamas was given a platform in the same building at a side event.
It is tempting to recommend that Israel simply ignore such resolutions. Indeed, the Israel’s UN ambassador Ron Prosor has been instructed not to answer the telephone if any of the UNHRC’S officials ring.
Who, after all, can truly believe that the so called “fact-finding mission“will be “independent“? Of course not. Its purpose will be to conceal facts, not find them.
But even though it is all a farce if you take it at face value, it matters because it is part of a broader strategy to isolate and deligitimise Israel in international institutions. First they tried war, then they tried terror and now they have invested their hopes in the UN. Israel must therefore respond. Obviously it shouldn’t co-operate — not letting the envoys into the country would be a start. There’s talk of suspending economic transfers to the Palestinian Authority too.
Whatever happens, the Palestinians must be seen to lose something for this move. They are either interested in peace or they are not. If they are, they should return to the negotiating table and stop playing diversionary games in the most shameful UN body in the world. The author is Director of International Affairs at the Henry Jackson Society