Israel withdrew a United Nations resolution calling for the protection of Israeli children from Palestinian terror – a mirror image of an Egyptian resolution regarding protecting Palestinian children from Israel.
Several “non-aligned” delegates, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, proposed changes to the amendment that were deemed unacceptable by Israel. These included replacing references to Israeli children with “children of the Middle East” and alluding to what they see as the Israeli military’s use of excessive force.
The resolution, which was seen partly as a test of the U.N.’s relationship with Israel, is widely believed in Israel to be blatant evidence of the international organization’s bias against the Jewish state.
Israeli U.N. Ambassador Danny Gillerman claimed that he would have preferred a resolution that did not single out any group of children, but he felt that a previous proposal favored Palestinians.
Gillerman blamed “hostile amendments which distorted and perverted the focus and intent of the draft resolution” for the move. The U.N., he said, was telling Israeli children “that your lives are worth less than Palestinian children,” the BBC reported. “Perhaps someone can explain to me why the hundreds of Israeli children killed or maimed in brutal terrorist attacks deserve less sympathy and attention.”
Na’sr Al-Kidwa, the U.N.’s Palestinian representative, said that Israel’s resolution was doomed as it was obviously belligerent, also according to the BBC report. He stated that Palestinians are a special case because they are deprived of all rights named in a 1990 U.N. document on child rights.
Israel’s brought forth the resolution followed the bombing of a Haifa restaurant, which resulted in 21 deaths; four of the dead were children.