Haarez
Kislev 25, 5767
The United Nations General Assembly on
Friday overwhelmingly approved plans for a UN registry to record and
process claims of damages caused by Israel's construction of its West Bank
barrier.
Israel rejected the move, saying it had set up a mechanism
to help those harmed by the structure, which it says is to keep out
suicide bombers but which Palestinians see as a land grab to preempt talks
on the borders of an eventual Palestinian state.
The barrier, a mix
of electronic fences and walls, has been under construction since 2002 and
eventually will stretch more than 400 miles, curling around Israeli
settlements as it cuts deep into Palestinian lands.
A resolution
adopted by a vote of 162 to 7 with 7 abstentions called for the
establishment within six months of a three-member board and a secretariat
to record and process damage claims.
While the UN initially said it
would set up the registry in the West Bank so its offices would be close
to those filing damage claims, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan later
recommended that it be based in Vienna, and the assembly went along with
that recommendation.
The registry, which is to remain open as long
as the barrier exists, will cost about $3 million a year to
operate.
Annan set out the plans for the registry in an Oct. 17
report, prepared in response to an August 2004 request from the 192-nation
General Assembly.
The assembly acted after the World Court in The
Hague ruled in a July 9, 2004, advisory opinion that the barrier was
illegal and should be torn down because it cut into territory seized by
Israel in 1967 during the Six Day War.
Palestinian UN Observer
Riyad Mansour, calling for the measure's approval, said Israel "must
comply or be compelled to comply with its legal obligations under
international law."
"The international community must hold Israel
accountable for its illegal actions" in Palestinian areas, he
added.
But Israeli UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman rejected the
resolution, saying some 140 claims had been reviewed and more than $1.5
million paid out to Palestinian complainants under Israel's own mechanism.
"Israel was willing to provide compensation to the Palestinians
affected by the fence," he said in remarks he directed at Mansour. "But
instead, you chose to ask the United Nations for its help. Instead of
helping your people and receiving direct assistance, you chose to put
another political mechanism in place that does not and will not bring
relief to
your people."
The United States voted against the
resolution.
"We believe that the registry process set forth in
this resolution remains too ill-defined and too open-ended in duration to
allow us to support it," U.S. envoy Christopher Ross said. "The United
States prefers to support the Palestinian people in other
ways."