UN panel adopts measure on Palestinian children
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By Evelyn Leopold UNITED NATIONS, Nov 6 (Reuters) - An Egyptian-sponsored resolution demanding that Israel protect Palestinian children was adopted by a U.N. General Assembly panel on Thursday, while a corresponding measure on Israeli children was postponed until next week. Israel, the target of hundreds of critical U.N. resolutions, on Tuesday introduced its first assembly draft in more than a quarter century, mirroring the Egyptian measure. But diplomats said chances of approval were slim. It would condemn attacks on Israeli children by Palestinian suicide bombers. The Egyptian draft resolution was passed by a vote of 88 to 4 but with 58 abstentions. The United States, Israel, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands voted against it, while the 15 European Union nations and Canada were among the abstentions. Israel's deputy U.N. ambassador, Arye Mekel, told the committee the resolution was one sided because "we believe that all the world's children are deserving of equal protection, including Israeli and Palestinian children." But a Palestinian representative said children in the West Bank and Gaza fell into a special category as they had lived under occupation for the last 40 years. The vote was tantamount to adoption in the full 191-nation General Assembly as every U.N. member has a seat on the panel. Israel's relations with the United Nations have been stormy since the 1967 Middle East war, with about two dozen assembly resolutions criticizing the Jewish state adopted each year. Most of them have been ignored by Israel, which maintains that Arab actions against the Jewish state have been brushed aside or condemned only in the most general terms. But it wasn't always that way. The General Assembly, the body that dominated the United Nations at its inception, voted in November 1947 to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, a move that led to Israel's creation a year later. In 1967, however, Israel's faith in the United Nations was severely jolted and it has more or less remained that way. Egypt put soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula and the United Nations, at Cairo's demand, withdrew a peacekeeping force from the Sinai. The ensuing 1967 Six Day War left Israel in control not only of Sinai and the Gaza Strip but also of the West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights after Jordan and Syria joined Egypt in the battle.
