An Egyptian government newspaper predicted on Tuesday that a UN call for Israel to withdraw from reoccupied Palestinian areas will remain a dead letter like previous resolutions criticising the Jewish state.
Gomhuriya editor-in-chief Samir Ragab wrote that the UN General Assembly resolution adopted late on Monday ”will join similar ones that preceded it, because as usual (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon will reject it.”
Sharon ”has adopted the opposite attitude: he has bolstered his grip on all the towns of the West Bank and imposed a total curfew,” said Ragab, who is close to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Measures taken by Sharon have ”increased the power and violence of the iron wall that is enclosing the Palestinians,” he added.
”We had hoped the United Nations would be effective, influential and respectable, not that it had adopted resolutions it is incapable of carrying out,” Ragab said.
He hoped also that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will refrain from ”distributing statements that lead to nothing.”
Ragab said the United Nations only implements a resolution if the ”United States judges it necessary” and that it ”was impossible for (Washington) to take steps which displease Israel.”
The General Assembly resolution demands that Israeli armed forces withdraw immediately to the positions they occupied when the current intifada, or uprising, began in September 2000.
The resolution, adopted by 114 votes to four with 11 abstentions, also calls for ”the immediate cessation of military incursions and all acts of violence, terror, provocation, incitement and destruction.”
The United States was among the four countries that voted against the resolution, which ”strongly deplores the lack of Israeli cooperation” in implementing previous UN resolutions on the matter.
In the United Arab Emirates meanwhile, the newspaper Al-Khaleej saw a positive side to the resolution.
Although it ”was not binding on Israel, it amounts to extremely important moral testimony that the world is convinced of the justice of the Palestinian cause and the barbarity and illegality of Israeli actions,” it said.
The vote ”is embarrassing for UN officials, including Secretary General Kofi Annan, who sold their conscience to please the United States and turned the international organisation … into a cover for injustice,” it said. – Sapa-AFP