Israel’s envoy blasts UN Security Council over inaction on Iran, PA
Israel’s Ambassador to the US and the United Nations Gilad Erdan sharply criticized the UN Security Council for not holding the Palestinian leadership accountable for its actions.
Ambassador Gilad Erdan. (Israel’s UN delegation)
He also commented on the Council’s decision to invite Hanan Ashrawi, a former senior leader in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Palestinian Authority, as a member of Palestinian civil society to brief the Council, and for willfully choosing to ignore Iran’s “malevolent behaviour” during its monthly session on the Situation in the Middle East.
In his remarks, Erdan said that “unfortunately, rather than pushing peace forward, the Security Council’s debates on the Situation in the Middle East, only seem to perpetuate the conflict. Rather than helping to turn the vision of peace into a reality, these debates create an alternate and false reality. These biased debates give the Palestinians the illusion that they will never be held accountable for their crimes and that all of their radical demands could be granted by the international community. The unbalanced discussions only serve to strengthen Palestinian rejectionism of any further negotiations with Israel, thereby maintaining the conflict.”
Erdan pointed to “the latest example of this absurd approach is the decision to invite, as a representative of civil society, an individual who was a member of the PLO Executive Committee, and who has been a Palestinian politician for decades. What’s next? Will you invite [former Iranian President] Hassan Rouhani and [former Iranian foreign minister] Javad Zarif as representatives of Iranian civil society? Ashrawi is not just a lifelong spokesperson for the Palestinian political leadership. She is an opponent of peace.”
He noted that following the Abraham Accords Israel signed with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, “she condemned these historic peace agreements and claimed that the leaders of the UAE and Bahrain had been ‘coerced and cajoled’ into making peace with Israel. Does the Security Council really want to give a platform to an enemy of peace?”
On Iran, Erdan said that “while some members of the Security Council remain stuck in the mud of their anti-Israel obsession, the real threat to global security is quickly advancing.”
“Iran continues to progress towards its goal of becoming a nuclear threshold state. The murderous Ayatollah regime continues to openly violate its international commitments in the fields of enrichment, stockpiling, uranium metal and advanced R&D while obstructing the IAEA[ the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency]. It is using the diplomatic talks to buy time so that it can enrich uranium to near weapons-grade levels while gaining nuclear know-how that can never be reversed. At the same time, Iran continues to spread death, destruction and instability throughout the region, as it seeks to advance a Shiite hegemony over the Middle East, and exports terror around the world,” he warned.
“Let me be clear – Israel favours a diplomatic solution. A diplomatic solution that would truly prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear threshold state. Yet seeing as Iran poses an existential threat to Israel, the State of Israel can never and will never, allow Iran to become a nuclear threshold state. We will do whatever is necessary to stop Iran’s nuclear drive, and counter the threat from its armies of proxies, along our borders and beyond our borders,” he concluded.
Israel believes that Iran is weeks away from accumulating the material needed for a nuclear bomb.
TPS
