Haaretz
Cheshvan 14, 5765
UNITED NATIONS - Israel has killed the
road map peace plan for the Middle East with apparent U.S. acquiescence, a
UN human rights investigator said on Thursday, triggering a strong
rebuttal from the Jewish state.
"The road map is dead. Israel has
killed it," South African law professor John Dugard told a General
Assembly committee.
"The world is looking to the United States for
leadership in this region, and the world is simply not getting it," said
Dugard, who monitors the Palestinian territories for the Geneva-based U.N.
Human Rights Commission.
His remarks came as a gravely ill
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat agreed to be rushed from the West Bank to
a French hospital for treatment, casting a cloud of uncertainty over the
Middle East political landscape.
The United States is part of the
quartet of international mediators that laid out the road map to Middle
East peace, along with Russia, the European Union and the United
Nations.
But the other quartet members quietly accuse Washington of
encouraging Israeli policies that violate the plan.
Israeli envoy
Tuvia Israeli responded to Dugard by saying his work had long been marked
by "lack of context, lack of balance, omission of facts and distortions of
both law and reality."
By ignoring Palestinians' "support of
terrorism, corruption, lack of reform and incitement to violence," Dugard
had advanced "a rejectionist myth that only one side has responsibilities
and only one has rights," Israeli said.
"Such a myth is not just a
lie; it is fundamentally incompatible with the road map and with the true
spirit of international law and diplomacy," Israeli told the
committee.
Dugard, in a report issued last month, accused Israel of
building its barrier on West Bank land in order to confiscate the land and
put pressure on Palestinians to move away, rather than to keep out suicide
bombers, as Israel says.
The Palestinians have similarly charged
that the barrier was a land-grab aimed at dashing their hopes for
statehood.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has fueled this
notion by arguing that his plan for a withdrawal from Gaza would ensure a
hold on much bigger settlements in the West Bank.
The criticism of
Dugard marked the second day in a row that the Jewish state criticized a
UN rights expert's findings.
On Wednesday, Israel blasted Jean
Ziegler of Switzerland, a UN expert on the right to food whom Israel wants
dismissed.
Relieving Ziegler of his duties would require the vote
of a majority of the 53 nations on the Commission on Human
Rights.
"Since his appointment in 2000, Mr. Ziegler has been
conducting a public relations assault against Israel, and recently he has
escalated his efforts into a trade war," Israeli told the same assembly
committee.
Ziegler in June wrote U.S. heavy-equipment maker
Caterpillar to say that a sale of its bulldozers to the Israeli military
could violate Palestinians' human rights.
"The target of his
personal obsession, Israel has faced a barrage of special reports, press
releases, and media interviews, as well as appearances at anti-Israel
international conferences, symposia and briefings that is out of any
conceivable relationship with reality," Israeli said.