Today’s editorial cartoon stems from last week when Palestine went to the United Nations to seek full membership to the United Nations in a bid to seek recognition of the Palestinian state as defined prior to the 1967 borders (which includes East Jerusalem and a security zone Israel has not relinquished to the Palestinian Government in the past). The surprise isn’t that Israel and the United States opposed the plan, the surprise is who publicly did.
The Chinese Foreign minister is in full support of it. Oh and so is Saudi Arabia. Both are known as repressive governments and major human rights violators (see here and here) and yet they continue to join the voice of the United Nations in condemning Israel above all other countries.
With their actual human-rights credentials off the table, Council members adopted a fixed agenda of only a few items to govern their proceedings. One item is devoted to Israel alone and one to all other 191 UN member states. The Human Rights Commission spent 40 years adopting country-specific criticisms, a third of which condemned Israel. Fifty percent of the “reformed” Council’s country-specific resolutions and decisions are devoted to Israel-bashing. There have been 12 special sessions in the last five years, and half of them have been on Israel alone. There has been only one “urgent debate” on a country — Israel. There have been more human rights reports commissioned on Israel than on any other state. And only one country is not allowed even to attend the lobbying and information-sharing regional meetings associated with the Council sessions — Israel — while “Palestine” is invited to all of them. (source)
Interesting that Israel doesn’t make either of the lists. Please don’t interpret that I don’t feel Israel holds some fault in their current situation but let’s also be clear. There is no situation, resolution or otherwise where I see Israel ever giving up East Jerusalem strictly from a security standpoint. So no matter what other concessions are given, there will likely never be full peace in that region but hopefully a situation where neighbors can leave each other alone.