Friday the US sponsored a resolution to condemn Hamas for recently firing over 450 rockets into Israel. It failed to get a majority of the member countries to support it. Why?
The act of firing even one unguided rocket in the general direction of any city seems to me to be a clear act of pure terrorism and makes those that launched it guilty of violating international conventions regarding how war is to be conducted. I do not accept the Hamas claim that a UN resolution by the General Assembly, which is an advisory opinion and hasn’t any standing as being legally binding, can be cited as permitting this kind of behavior. The General Assembly passes resolutions almost every year that are aimed at “solving” the ongoing Arab-Israel conflict. Is that really necessary? Hamas is NOT a UN member. The Fatah controlled Palestinian Authority is not a member state, either. Why is the “Palestinian” case brought up again and again? More to the point, why doesn’t the Palestinian Authority try talking to the Israelis?
There are several points that the two sides cannot agree on. The most important is that the Palestinians want to have Israel disappear. They mask that under the other claims they put forward. One is to REQUIRE all Palestinian “refugees” to return to the places they or their forefathers left in 1948 or thereafter. Why 1948? because most of them came to British Mandate Palestine between 1921 and 1948, Jews who came during that period must return to wherever, The Palestinians don’t care where. as long as they leave. Refugees from other places, whether political or economic, go to new homes. The Palestinians are denied this possibility by what is supposed to be their own government.
That, by the way, is the same body that calls Israel racist while supporting laws of their own that deny Jews the right to own land in territory under their control and mandates a death sentence for Palestinians who do sell land to Jews, This year the Palestinians triedto use this law to prevent the sale of property in Jerusalem by a former Palestinian living abroad to a Jewish group. In other words, any Arab who sells land that was part of the former British Mandate to a Jew is to be killed. This is true even if the land is not currently under Palestinian Authority control, and even if the seller is not a Palestinian citizen or resident.
Mind boggling, isn’t it?
Wetherhorn 