-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/02_06_02_a.htm
}}}>Begin
Opinion
Serial law-breaker has no right to invoke UN Charter
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres has to be excused for
occasionally mouthing inanities. Unsupported accusations against
various parties and laughable professions of national innocence are
simply par for the course when one�s brief is to represent a country
that flouts the law on the world stage. But Peres is stretching even
his own and his countrymen�s prodigious capacity for self-delusion in
his latest mission as point man for Israel�s propaganda campaign
against Iran.
On Monday, Peres claimed that apart from supplying Hizbullah with
rockets capable of hitting central Israel, Iran had also deployed
�Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon, which is illegal and contrary to
the UN Charter.� And he had the temerity to make that statement, with
nary a sheepish grin of embarrassment, just after a meeting with the
world body�s secretary-general, Kofi Annan.
If a similar statement were uttered by a similar character
representing a similar nation in a (necessarily comedic) movie, the
audience would burst into laughter. But this is real life, and the
lives ruined by Israeli aggression are not fictional, so the
spectacle of Israel�s invoking the UN Charter should have provoked
outrage because of its own history of wantonly disregarding that
document and dozens of others.
Given its indefensible record as a serial violator of the UN Charter,
UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, the Geneva
Conventions, basic civil and human rights, and just about every other
existing measure of political behavior, Israel is uniquely
unqualified to complain about what may or may not constitute a breach
of these or any other standards.
Those who point this out are regularly accused of monotony, but
decisions such as UNSC resolutions 194, 242, 338, and 425 (not to
mention innumerable others) were taken in the hope that Israel would
obey the expressed will of the international community and thus
improve its own security by implementing them. It took more than two
decades for most of 425 to be acted upon, and some others have been
gathering dust since 1948; this is not the curriculum vitae of a
nation entitled to complaining that the United Nations� founding
principles are being ignored.
Of course, even if all the accusations were true, they would also be
irrelevant. This is because Article 51 of the UN Charter reads in
part: �Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right
of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs
against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council
has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and
security.�
This means that the Lebanese and the Palestinians for that matter are
perfectly justified in seeking to redress, however minimally,
Israel�s overwhelmingly military superiority.
As for the rest of Article 51 (�Measures taken by Members in the
exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported
to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority
and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter
to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to
maintain or restore international peace and security�), Israel and
the world community have ignored the parts which respectively apply
to them, so who is calling the kettle black?
Your feedback is important to us!
We invite all our readers to share with us their views and comments
about this article.
Copyright� 2001 The Daily Star. All rights reserved.
End<{{{
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