Monday, January 5, 2009

My New Year's resolution is not to pay attention to UN resolutions.

Why don't the world shows the sensitivity they showed in Georgia?  
The UN, the US, the EU countries and others mobilized rapidly on Georgia issues.
"Everybody remains unmoved while Gaza is shot with disproportionate power." 

"A six-month-long truce was maintained, and Hamas observed it. But Israel didn't stick to the deal for lifting the embargo. People in Gaza are living in a sort of open-air prison. Actually, Palestine in general is a prison. Humanity should be sensitive at this point"

When did UN resolutions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict make a difference- 181, 194, 242, 338 to name a few? Here in East Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem and other Palestinian towns and villages, there are plenty of words members of the United Nation Security Council may want to borrow for their useless resolution: death, horror, and destruction.

The List of United Nations resolutions concerning Israel is here from 1967 to 1989. The UN Security Council passed 131 resolutions directly addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict. Resolutions concerning Israel have never invoked Chapter VII of the UN Charter. 

Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter sets out the UN Security Council's powers to maintain peace. It allows the Council to "determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression" and to take military and nonmilitary action to "restore international peace and security".

Chapter VII also gives the Military Staff Committee responsibility for strategic coordination of forces placed at the disposal of the UN Security Council. It is made up of the chiefs of staff of the five permanent members of the Council.

The UN Charter's prohibition of member states of the UN attacking other UN member states is central to the purpose for which the UN was founded in the wake of the destruction of World War II: to prevent war. This overriding concern is also reflected in the Nuremberg Trials' concept of a crime against peace "starting or waging a war against the territorial integrity, political independence or sovereignty of a state, or in violation of international treaties or agreements..." (crime against peace), which was held to be the crime that makes all war crimes possible.

With this, my New Year's resolution is not to pay attention to UN resolutions.


Number of resolutions vetoed by each of the five permanent members of the Security Council between 1946 and 2007.

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