UN set to vote on slew of measures critical of Israel



The United Nations General Assembly is set to vote Friday on nine resolutions critical of Israel and none against any other country.
The measures, which range from condemnations of Israeli construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank to renewing the mandate of a UN committee probing “Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs of the occupied territories,” were sponsored by a number of countries that have been scrutinized for their own human rights records, among them Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
Some of the resolutions, such as one reaffirming the mandate of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, were sponsored by European states such as Ireland, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Portugal and Sweden.


“The UN’s planned assault on Israel with a torrent of one-sided resolutions is surreal,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the UN Watch monitor group.
Neuer noted the vote on the resolutions came just days after Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip launched some 460 rockets toward Israel. “The world body now adds insult to injury,” he said.
Another resolution set to be voted on was a Syrian-backed measure calling on Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed it in a move never recognized internationally.


Late Thursday, the United States mission to the UN said it would vote against the resolution, marking the first time the US will do so.
“After the Syrian regime has killed half a million of its own people, how can the UN call for more people to be handed over to Assad’s rule? The text is morally galling, and logically absurd,” Neuer said.
He also applauded US Ambassador Nikki Haley for declaring she would vote against the measure.
The non-binding resolution, which is voted on by the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee each year, takes issue with the “illegality of the decision” taken by Israel “to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan,” which it says is illegal under international law.
“The atrocities the Syrian regime continues to commit prove its lack of fitness to govern anyone,” Haley said in a statement.









The United States will for the first time vote against an annual UN resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights, the country’s mission to the world body said on Friday, signifying a dramatic shift in US policy toward the territory.
In Friday’s scheduled vote on “The Occupied Syrian Golan” resolution, the US will change its yearly abstention to a “no” vote, outgoing US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said in a statement.
“If this resolution ever made sense, it surely does not today. The resolution is plainly biased against Israel,” Haley said, announcing the planned move.
The non-binding resolution, which is voted on by the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee each year, takes issue with the “illegality of the decision” taken by Israel “to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan,” which it says is illegal under international law.
Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War and annexed the territory in the early 1980s. But the United States and the international community have long refused to recognize Israeli sovereignty there and officially consider it Syrian territory under Israeli occupation.
Haley however, said on Friday that “the atrocities the Syrian regime continues to commit prove its lack of fitness to govern anyone.”
Israel has reportedly pressed the White House in recent months to recognize the annexation, arguing that the bloody civil war in Syria undergirded Israeli claims that the plateau is critical to maintaining security.
In August, Syrian government forces backed by Iran and Russia reached the frontier with the Israeli Golan Heights after capturing the territory from rebels and Islamic State fighters.
Though it has sought to avoid direct involvement in the Syrian conflict, Israel has acknowledged carrying out dozens of airstrikes there to stop deliveries of advanced weaponry bound for Iranian proxy Hezbollah.