November 5, 2003	Wednesday	Ramazan 9, 1424

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 4: Israel, the object of hundreds of critical UN resolutions, took the unusual step of circulating its first General Assembly measure since 1976, challenging nations to censure those who kill Israeli children.

The draft, before the assembly’s social, humanitarian and cultural committee, stresses the need for “Israeli children to live a normal life free from terrorism, destruction and fear” and calls on Palestinians to bring perpetrators to justice.

It mirrors an Egyptian resolution that criticizes the consequences of Israeli military actions on the well-being of Palestinian children.

“There was no reason to single out any group of children,” Ariel Milo, director of communications for Israel’s UN mission, said on Monday.

“But when Palestinians want to make a mockery out of the United Nations, we are not going to be idle,” Mr Milo said.

Any decision by the panel, known as the third committee, which has representatives from all 191 UN members, is tantamount to adoption by the General Assembly. The Israeli and Egyptian resolutions are expected to be put to a vote by the end of the month.

Israel would prefer to have no resolution. However, if the Egyptian draft, which was adopted for the first time last year and reintroduced this year, were approved, an Israeli measure should be passed also, Mr Milo said.

He pointed to an Oct 4 bombing in Haifa, which killed 21 people, four of them children. “After the attack in Haifa, we can’t just let it be,” Mr Milo said.

1976 DRAFT: Although Israeli envoys said the new resolution was their country’s first ever, Israel circulated a draft on Dec 6, 1976, calling for the reconvening of Middle East peace talks with Egypt, Jordan and Syria.

But it withdrew the document three days later when amendments were introduced that would have included in the talks the Palestine Liberation Organization, whose charter still called for Israel’s destruction.

Israel’s relations with the United Nations have been stormy since the 1967 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 it 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 Nov 1947 to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. This led to Israel’s creation a year later.—Reuters