In the past 18 months, there has been renewed movement at the UN with Israel again the target of condemnations, and unduly harsh criticism.

At the time of the UN’s 50th anniversary, the organization failed to mention the Holocaust in its World War II resolution. Though the resolution noted that millions had perished in the war, it ignored Israel’s request to include specific reference to the Holocaust and to the destruction of European Jewry.

Recently, the UN has also taken action on a number of other issues related to Israel:

Jerusalem

In December 1995, shortly after the United States Congress passed its "Jerusalem bill," mandating that the United States must move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by 1999, the UN voted 133 to 1 against Israel’s sovereignty in Jerusalem. The GA resolution said that, ⁰The decision of Israel to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the Holy City of Jerusalem is illegal... and null and void." Furthermore, it denounced "the transfer of some States of their diplomatic missions to Jerusalem." While Israel was the only nation to vote against this resolution, the United States abstained from the vote, saying that according to the Oslo agreements the issue of Jerusalem is to be determined during the bilateral final status negotiations, that interference by the international community in the peace process is detrimental to its success, and that unilateral condemnations of Israel serve only to exacerbate tensions in the region.

Lebanon

The UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon met with leaders of the extremist Shi’ite Muslim organization Hezbollah in March 1996. Hezbollah, created in the early 1980s, aims to establish an Iranian-inspired Islamic state in Lebanon. and states its goal to be the "Struggle against the Jewish state and the Jews’ conspiracy against Islam." It has launched terrorist attacks against Western, Israeli and Jewish targets in Lebanon, Israel and around the world. Discussing the March meeting, UN spokesman Timur Goksel said, "we are putting the UN’s relations with Hezbollah on the right path.... We are friends of the resistance and have lived the experience of the Islamic resistance since it started."

In April 1996, Israel launched a counterattack on the spot from which Hezbollah fighters had fired Katyusha rockets into northern Israel. Tragically, the Israeli missiles missed the Hezbollah position and inadvertently hit the nearby UN base in Qana, Lebanon, killing 100. In response, the GA called for a halt in the Israeli-Lebanese hostilities, condemned Israel alone for the incident, and passed a resolution, 64 to 2, demanding that Israel pay reparations and withdraw from all Lebanese territory (in reference to Israel’s 9-mile security zone in southern Lebanon).. Most members of the GA abstained from this vote, calling the resolution unbalanced. Moreover, at the time of the Qana incident the UN issued a one-sided report which condemned Israel before giving Israeli officials a chance to present their data on the accident. In June 1997, the GA voted 66 to 2 that Israel pay $1.7 million to cover the damages in Qana. No reference was made to the damages Hezbollah caused in northern Israel.

The Palestinians

On November 27, 1996, the UN issued a report extremely critical of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians. The report came during an extended Israeli military closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which had been implemented several months earlier in reaction to a series of Palestinian suicide bombings that killed 59 people in IsraeL With no consideration of Israel’s real security concerns, the UN report harshly rebuked Israel, demanding that the state stop all violations of human rights by ending its military closure on the territories and releasing Palestinian prisoners.

Moreover, the report was issued shortly after the decision of the newly elected Likud government in Israel to cancel the previous government’s freeze on settlement construction. In this context, the report criticized the expansion of Jewish settlements and unjustly accused Israel of "creeping ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Earlier that year, the United States had blocked another UN resolution which called on Israel to return 131 acres of what it termed "expropriated Arab land."

Peace Process

On December 4, 1996, the GA passed several resolutions regarding Israel and the Middle East peace process. While the main resolution resembled a draft passed in previous years which called for an acceleration in the peace process, in 1996 it was also accompanied by a number of resolutions unduly critical of Israel. One of the resolutions, passed 159 to 2 (only Israel and the U.S. voted negatively), demanded that Israel withdraw from the territories occupied in 1967 and stressed the importance of the realization of the inalienable rights of the Palestinians. Another resolution demanded that Israel withdraw from the entire Golan Heights. In response, the United States reprimanded the GA, saying that its interjection into the peace process, and matters that the parties had agreed to discuss during face-to-face negotiations, would only further complicate the situation in the Middle East.

Har Homa

The UN has passed a number of anti-Israel resolutions regarding Israel’s construction project on Har Homa in Jerusalem. On March 12, 1997, the GA passed the first of these resolutions by 130 to 2; again only the United States and Israel voted negatively. The resolution expressed "deep concern at the decision of the Israelis to initiate new settlement activity in the Jebel Abu Ghneim area," using the Arabic name for Har Homa. It also labeled all settlement activity "illegal and a major obstacle to peace," and urged that Israel "refrain from all actions or measures, including settlement activities, which alter the facts on the ground, preempting the final status negotiations, and have negative implications for the Middle East Peace Process." ‘It called for "immediate and full cessation" of the Har Homa housing project and for "all forms of assistance and support for illegal Israeli activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem." In fact, it went so far as to deem all Israeli legislation in Jerusalem invalid, despite the fact that Jerusalem is the sovereign, undivided capital of IsraeL

Several weeks later, in an emergency session convened by the Arab group, the General Assembly again voted, 134 to 3, against Israel’s construction project on Har Homa. This time it recommended ending any support for Israeli settlement activity. In July 1997, at another reconvened emergency session on Har Homa, the GA voted overwhelmingly against the housing project and called on member states to "actively discourage activities which directly contribute to any construction or development of Israeli settlements, including Jerusalem." At that time, the GA also recommended convening a conference to enforce the Fourth Geneva Convention which bars settlement in occupied territories. Additionally, it threatened Israel’s membership in the UN, saying that members, "in order to ensure their rights and benefits from membership, should fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them."

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan also criticized the housing project at Har Homa as "the final step toward the isolation of Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank." He called it part of Israel’s plan "of fully incorporating East Jerusalem as part of the ‘unified, eternal capital of the State of Israel.’"

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Dore Gold countered the GA’s Har Homa resolutions, saying that these types of resolutions send the message that "the United Nations is a convenient and willing forum for bypassing the peace process." He criticized the emergency sessions as "an approach which threatens to turn the clock back decades" and called the report submitted pursuant to the resolution, "hostile and one-sided." United States envoy to the UN Bill Richardson called the Har Homa resolution "a partisan resolution aimed not at building confidence or dialogue, but at confrontation."

Other Incidents

After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to open a new exit to the ancient Hasmonean tunnel in the Old City of Jerusalem, in September 1996, there was an uproar of Palestinian violence and conflict with Israeli forces. In response, the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for the tunnel to be closed, insisting that the opening of the new exit had provoked the nearly 70 deaths, and fully blaming IsraeL According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, however, the UN resolution "ignores the campaign of incitement and vilification on the part of the Palestinian Council and several Arab states which engendered the current outbreak of violence."

In Geneva, April 1997, Palestinian observer Nabil Ramlawi told the United Nations Commission on Human Rights that Israelis had injected 300 Palestinian children with the HIV virus during the intifada. Only after several weeks of silence did UN Secretary General Kofi Annan denounce the statement. Ambassador Miroslav Somol, then Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights, never followed through with his promise to officially condemn the statement. In fact, he apologized to ambassador Ramlawi and the Arab Group for "any harm" the controversy may have caused them.