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Thursday, February 03, 2022

A look at one of the 40 anti-Israel UN reports last year



Last year, the UN issued about 40 anti-Israel reports. (This does not include bodies like the UN Human Rights Council.)

One of them, A/76/289, is based on previous UN resolutions calling for Israel to compensate Palestinians for properties they abandoned in 1948. It refers to this one from 2018 but virtually identical resolutions have been put forth regularly for decades. 

These resolutions "Calls upon all the parties concerned to provide the Secretary-General with any pertinent information in their possession concerning Arab property, assets and property rights in Israel that would assist him in the implementation of the present resolution."

Who responds to these resolutions?

In 2021, four countries responded. Not one of them responded with "pertinent information in their possession concerning Arab property, assets and property rights in Israel."

The responses were from Bahrain, Ecuador, Japan and "the State of Palestine."

Ecuador wrote a couple of paragraphs about the importance of the resolution. Japan wrote a long, irrelevant submission about how it is trying to help Palestinians and promote peace. The "State of Palestine" used this as an opportunity to write an Israel-bashing essay and support for UNRWA.

Bahrain's submission is the most problematic:

• We affirm that the Palestinian refugee issue is at the heart of the Palestinian cause. We uphold the inherent and inalienable right of generations of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to the homes from which they wer e displaced, in accordance with international resolutions, and in particular General Assembly resolution 194 (III) and the Arab Peace Initiative. 
• We condemn and reject any attempts by any party to nullify Palestinian refugees’ right of return or to distort the refugee issue by attempting to resettle them, dismantle the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), stop its funding or deprive future generations of their right of return through a so-called redefinition of their legal status. 
Like the others, this has nothing to do with the resolution. It is a call for Israel to allow itself to be destroyed with an influx of millions of fake refugees. 

Bahrain did not have to submit anything. But it chose to emphasize the false "right of return." 

I can imagine that this was a response to Palestinian rage at their normalization agreement with Israel, a message that "hey, we are still on your side." Even so, given that they are now at peace with Israel, this is concerning.