Threat to Israel looming in the UN - Gillerman
By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial StaffOctober 9, 2003
Jerusalem (www.jnewswire.com) - Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman warned Wednesday Syria was trying to maneuver the Security Council into fully backing the US-sponsored Road Map to a Palestinian state.
Gillerman issued his alert days after sternly telling a meeting of the Council on the Yom Kippur eve, as it debated condemning Israel for striking a terrorist base near Damascus, "God is watching you."
That earlier warning was broadcast coast-to-coast across the United States.
Dangerous developments
According to Gillerman, plans are underway to introduce to the council in the coming days a Syrian-sponsored, Palestinian-backed resolution demanding Israel halt construction of the security fence designed to keep suicide bombers from attacking Israeli cities and towns.
Following in the wake of that resolution will be another, this one demanding that Israel and the PA implement the Road Map, Gillerman said, according to The Jerusalem Post.
Unlike General Assembly resolutions, those passed in the Security Council are binding under international law.
The Israeli described these as "dangerous developments" which could "change the rules of the game."
If the latter resolution is adopted, the Road Map could go from being the international Quartet's US-driven initiative to a United Nations plan.
A US spokesman at the UN said he had not yet seen any formal drafts regarding either the Ffence or the Road Map.
Debate followed terror base bombing
Meanwhile, the US has indicated it will veto the resolution currently being debated in the Security Council if Syria, which is also sponsoring this proposal, fails to include a condemnation of terrorism in the text.
Syria brought the draft resolution before the Council Sunday, a few hours after Israeli warplanes bombed a terrorist training base not far from Damascus.
Israel's action, the first attack on Syrian territory since the Yom Kippur War 30 years ago, was in response to a Palestine Islamic Jihad-perpetrated 'suicide' bombing that killed 19 Israelis in a Haifa restaurant on Saturday.
According to Israel, the PIJ was one of a number of groups that used the base to train terrorists in 'suicide' and other forms of terrorism before sending them back into Israel.
The PIJ's murderous campaign
Speaking shortly before the start of Yom Kippur, Gillerman expressed regret at the council's unwillingness to postpone the debate until after the Jewish holy day.
Recounting the previous day's Haifa terrorist attack, in which "whole families were wiped out," Gillerman noted that the PIJ, "a terrorist organization that operates freely from Palestinian Authority territory and has headquarters in Damascus, Syria [had] proudly claimed responsibility for this massacre."
The Haifa attack had been just the latest in more than forty terrorist atrocities committed by PIJ in the past few years.
Gillerman said the group's other attacks included "the massacre of 21 teenagers at a discotheque in Tel-Aviv on 2 June 2001; the bombing of 5 June 2002 at the Meggido Junction which killed 18 Israelis; the bombing of a commuter bus on 21 October 2002 which killed 14 citizens; the attack on a shopping mall in the Israeli town of Afula on 19 May 2003, in which 3 civilians were killed and over 70 wounded; and the attack on March 30, 2003 where a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at a cafe in Netanya wounding 58 civilians."
Accuser becomes the accused
Instead of further defending his government's actions, the Israeli rounded on Syria, a US-listed terror-sponsoring state that sits on the rotating membership of the Security Council.
Turning the accuser into the accused, Gillerman detailed "the nature of the involvement of the Syrian regime in the deliberate murder of innocent civilians."
"There are few better exhibits of State-sponsorship for terrorism than the one provided by the Syrian regime," he said.
As far as Israel was concerned, Damascus "bears direct and criminal responsibility" for "the callous murder of hundreds of its civilians."
Gillerman described the membership "of this arch-sponsor of terrorism" on the Security Council as "an unbearable contradiction and an embarrassment to the United Nations."
For Syria to have asked for a debate of the Council, he added, was "comparable to the Taliban calling for such a debate."
Double standard
Closing Israel's statement, Gillerman turned to the representatives of the other states on the council and asked "what any other country sitting around this table would do in the face of the callous murder of hundreds of its civilians?"
Many UN states, including those on the Security Council, had "been faced with terrorism of far less intensity" than that confronting Israel, and had "responded with far less restraint and far less concern for human life" than Israel has done.
"And yet," Gillerman argued, " the Security Council has not seen fit to scrutinize their conduct" but on certain occasions had "specifically endorsed such defensive measures."
Israel appeals to the world
Gillerman rhetorically asked the international community what it would have Israel do "in the face of the rejectionism, aggression and terrorist sponsorship of the Syrian regime, together with Iran and the Palestinian Authority?"
"Like any state faced with such a critical and prolonged threat, Israel must exercise its inherent right and obligation to defend its citizens."
"The time has come for the Council … which has been at the forefront of the global counter-terrorism campaign, to hold to account a brutal dictatorship that is world-renowned for adopting terrorism as its primary tool," Gillerman said.
"The world is watching. And today, more than on any other day, God is watching too!"
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