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Paleos Whine
The Palestinian Authority asked the U.N. Security Council on Thursday to adopt a resolution that seeks to bar Israel from carrying out plans to extend a security wall deep into the Palestinian West Bank.
"We want the right to slaughter."
The 15-nation council agreed to discuss the request on Friday and is expected to schedule a public meeting on the issue next week, diplomats said. The Palestinian draft resolution is the second text seeking to condemn Israel to come before the council in five days, joining a Syrian draft introduced on Sunday after Israel attacked what it said was a training camp for Palestinian militants near Damascus. Syria insists it was a civilian site.
It's called a diplomatic offensive...
In deference to the Syrian proposal, Palestinian U.N. envoy Nasser al-Kidwa left open the timing of an eventual vote on his own draft resolution, which would declare that building the security barrier beyond Israel’s 1967 borders violates international law and ’’must be ceased and reversed.’’
The Paleo rules of propaganda engagement say, as soon as you blow up a significant number of civilians you've got to holler real loud about something the Israelis are doing, and that way the entire world forgets the corpses in seven days or less. Works every time.
’’We can wait. There is no problem whatsoever. But at the same time, we don’t want to have a time gap between the second phase of building the wall and action in the Security Council,’’ al-Kidwa told Reuters. Since its introduction, the Syrian draft has stalled in the council for lack of support. Council diplomats said it would have to add language critical of Arab militant groups launching suicide attacks against Israel to win the nine votes needed for passage, a linkage Syria has so far refused to accept. Even then, the United States has threatened to veto it.
See? If they'd waited a week, no problem...
"Such an addition would be too conducive to Jewish survival"
The Palestinian text, which denounces both the security fence and Israeli plans to build more than 600 new homes in Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, also faces a likely U.S. veto, under criteria set out by U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte. Negroponte last month vetoed a council resolution demanding that Israel back away from announced plans ’’to remove’’ Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, arguing the text was biased against Israel and failed to criticize militant groups that have taken responsibility for suicide attacks in Israel. But Arab nations responded by taking a slightly modified version of the text to the 191-nation U.N. General Assembly, where the United States does not have a veto. The assembly adopted it by a lopsided 133-4 vote with 15 abstentions.
That was predictable.
The United States and Israel accounted for half of the ’’No’’ votes, leaving them isolated from the European Union states and Russia, fellow members along with the United Nations of the so-called quartet of Middle East peace mediators. The quartet has elaborated a road map to peace setting out steps to be taken by both sides on the way to creation of a Palestinian state by 2005. But the plan has bogged down over Israel’s refusal, with U.S. backing, to set off down the path until the Palestinians rein in militants blamed for suicide attacks, and by Palestinian suspicions that Israel would give nothing in return, even if the authority dismantled militant groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
That and the bus bombing, of course... Oh. I'm sorry. The week's up, isn't it?

Posted by: Atrus 2003-10-09
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=19686