Sunday, August 27, 2017

Visit of UN Secretary General to Israel

This week UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is conducting his first visit to Israel since his appointment. While in Israel the Secretary General will meet with PM Netanyahu, Defense Minister Liberman and senior figures from the IDF, as well as President Rivlin.

Following are the key elements of Israel's position on the substantive issues:
·      Israel sees this visit as a welcome opportunity for a new beginning in relations with the world body, and welcome the Secretary General as a friend.
·      The UN's and its agencies' obsessive pre-occupation with Israel must end if the world body is to make a constructive contribution to peace and stability in the region. 
The Secretary General must be challenged on the full array of problematic UN activity:
o   The UN  Human Rights Council shameless singling out of Israel
o   The repeated, outrageous UNESCO decisions rewriting the history Jerusalem and Hebron to exclude the Jewish people
o   The annual circus of anti-Israel resolutions in the General Assembly and the permanent committees they create.
o   The discriminatory anti-Israel activities of different U.N. bodies and their "industry" of reports, declarations and decisions.
Further the Security Council must act more resolutely to implement its resolutions forbidding Hezbollah rearmament and entrenchment in southern Lebanon. The Security Council must act to prevent a deterioration of the already dangerous situation.
The UN must act to stop the ongoing Palestinian encouragement of terror against Israeli civilians - online, through the payment of stipends to convicted terrorists and their families, through naming town squares after murderers. These fundamental obstacles to any kind of progress with the Palestinians.
Israel has the experience and the ability to make a meaningful contribution to the UN in many fields:

o   in cyber-security, water technologies, women's' empowerment, disabled rights, combatting desertification, and more. Israel is also a partner in the global effort to combat terror. 

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