BICOM

The US Middle East envoy, Jason Greenblatt, urged UN Security Council members to condemn Hamas missiles during a special meeting yesterday to discuss Israeli settlements.

He told the Security Council: “It is baffling and disappointing to see the obvious, continual anti-Israel bias here. Here we are in an Arria session to condemn Israel, in the same halls where just a few months ago, member states failed to condemn Hamas, a known terrorist organisation that just a few days ago fired close to 700 rockets at Israel – including at hospitals and schools. It is truly shameful that in these halls there have been nearly 700 resolutions condemning actions of Israel – the region’s only real democracy – yet not one condemning Hamas’s attacks on Israelis or its abuse and neglect of the very people it purports to govern.”

Greenblatt said the Trump administration’s proposals for Israeli-Palestinian talks “will be realistic and implementable,” describing it as: “The right package of compromises for both sides. It is time for a new approach.” He finished his speech by asking the UN Security Council to focus on ending the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) practice of incentivising terrorists rather than how it can support the PA budget.

Palestinian Authority (PA) Foreign Minister Riyad Maliki responded: “This is not a peace plan but rather conditions for surrender and there is no amount of money that can make it acceptable. Israel does not hide any more the true colonial nation of its occupation and its intention to annex Palestinian land. This kind of ‘colonialism’ was prohibited by the UN charter, UN resolutions and international criminal law. What shall prevail – illegal settlements or UN Security Council resolutions? … what shall prevail – war crimes or the Rome Statute?”

Although Israel was not invited to speak at the session, Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon issued a statement after the meeting saying: “The Palestinian leadership repeats the same lies against Israel while it continues to pay salaries to terrorists. This policy has only led to more UN discussions, but not to a future for its people. The international community must renounce the PA’s culture of terrorism and incitement, and not condone this policy.”

PA Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh called on the World Bank to align its projects with the Palestinian priorities of boosting the economy, creating jobs and reducing unemployment. During a meeting with the World Bank Country Director for the West Bank and Gaza, Kanthan Shankar, Shtayyeh said: “Israel wants to destroy and exhaust the Palestinian economy, through the deduction of the tax money … and by trying to pull the banking institutions operating in Palestine into a legal war leading to their liquidation and closure.”