Withdrawal of UN report criticising Israel decried
AFTER the head of a UN agency resigned, citing pressure from the UN Secretary-General to censor a report accusing Israel of imposing an apartheid regime on Palestinians, Palestinian officials denounced the UN for removing the report.
Head of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) Rima Khalaf resigned on Friday, telling reporters in Beirut that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had insisted on the withdrawal of the damning report, no longer on ESCWA’s website.
Khalaf stood by the report, calling it the “first of its kind” from a UN agency that sheds light on “the crimes Israel continues to commit against the Palestinian people, which amount to war crimes against humanity”.
ESCWA, made up of 18 Arab states, said in the report Israel was guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt” of imposing apartheid policies against Palestinians.
Israeli officials denounced it, comparing it to Nazi propaganda and calling for Guterres to publicly reject it.
Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi condemned the decision by the UN to remove the report. “Instead of succumbing to political blackmail or allowing itself to be censured or intimidated by external parties, the UN should condemn the acts described in the report and hold Israel responsible.” The PLO official lauded the report as “highlighting apartheid, ethnic cleansing and military occupation”.
Ashrawi called on Guterres “to reinstate the report and to hold Israel accountable”.
Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs Riyad al-Maliki reacted with “deep regret” that Khalaf was compelled to resign and expressed his “unequivocal objection” to the withdrawal of the report, an “objective analysis of the facts on the ground, arriving at an accurate conclusion based on the legal definition of the crime of apartheid”.
Al-Maliki noted that UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric’s defending the report’s withdrawal did not take issue with its contents, but with the fact that it had allegedly been published without consultation with the UN secretariat.
The report’s removal “sends a dangerous message to countries that commit crimes; that with enough pressure, their actions can be ignored and reporting on it censored”.