Israel cuts contact with UN rights council, to protest settlements probe
Israel's Foreign Ministry orders
envoy to Geneva to ignore all phone calls from rights council
commissioner; 'The council sparked this process', says a senior Israeli
official.
By Barak Ravid
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-cuts-contact-with-un-rights-council-to-protest-settlements-probe-1.420786
Israel decided Monday to sever all contact with the United Nations human
rights council and with its chief commissioner Navi Pillay, after the
international body decided to establish an international investigative
committee on the West Bank settlements.
The Foreign Ministry
ordered Israel's ambassador to Geneva to cut off contact immediately,
instructing him to ignore phone calls from the commissioner, a senior
Israeli official said.
Israel will also bar a fact-finding team
dispatched by the council from entering Israel and the West Bank to
investigate settlement construction.
"We will not permit members
of the human rights council to visit Israel and our ambassador has been
instructed to not even answer phone calls," said the official. "The
secretariat of the human rights council and Nabi Pilawai sparked this
process by establishing an international investigative committee on
settlements, and we will thus not work with them anymore and will not
appear before the council," said the official.
Israeli Arab MK
Ahmed Tibi (Ra'am-Ta'al) criticized the move, saying that it amounted to a
“boycott of the UN,” and asked what “Lieberman and Yisrael Beiteinu
have in common with human rights.”
MK Dov Khenin (Hadash) also
condemned the decision, saying that Israel “prefers settlements over
human rights and contact with the international community.” Khenin
called the move “dangerous,” saying that “through disconnecting from the world,
the government is only isolating itself.”
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Friday that the move by the UN body
proves that
the Palestinians do not want to renew negotiations with Israel. "We are
dealing with Al-Qaida terror on the one hand and diplomatic terror by
Abu Mazen on the other," Lieberman said, referring to PA President
Mahmoud Abbas.
Senior officials in the Prime Minister's Bureau and the Foreign Ministry said
then that Israel would not cooperate with the UN committee. The Prime
Minister's Bureau decided Friday that the
committee's members - who are yet to be determined - would not be
allowed into Israel.
Israel is also considering sanctions against the Palestinian Authority in
response to the human rights council decision.
This story is by:
* Barak Ravid
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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