The 191-member United Nations General Assembly today overwhelmingly affirmed the need to enable the Palestinian people "to exercise sovereignty and to achieve independence in their State, Palestine."
The world community has voted to give Palestinians not only a voice and place at the table concerning control of their lands currently occupied by the state of Israel but affirming their sovereign rights over the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
This comes as a slap in the face to Mr Bush who just last month told Ariel Sharon that Israel could hold West Bank territory. Although Mr Bush is appointed President of The United States he has no authority to represent the Palestinian people in negotiating their affairs with the occupying power. Mr Bush was snubbed by US ally King Abdullah immediately after the troubled President supported Sharon's attempts to annex Palestinian territory housing illegal Israeli settlements. He met with the King of Jordan yesterday:
After a meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan, the president did not repeat the assurances he gave Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last month that he supports Israel's retention of some population clusters on the West Bank as part of an overall agreement with the Palestinians.
All such issues must be negotiated against the backdrop of 1967 and 1973 UN Security Council resolutions that called for Israel to withdraw from captured land, Bush said at a joint news conference with the king.
"The United States will not prejudice the outcome of those negotiations," Bush said...
Reading media reports of this is very instructive. Compare the reporting of The Jerusalem Post with the more center Ha'aretz and then read the account in Maariv International. Just the distance between what is reported in each Israeli media source makes it appear that the reporters are witnesses to different but similiar events, especially in light of the UN headline offered above.
Reuters, a respected information source offers up a clear picture:
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly, in a rebuke to President Bush, overwhelmingly affirmed on Thursday the right of Palestinians to sovereignty over their territory seized by Israel in 1967.
The 191-nation assembly voted 140-6, with 11 abstentions, to adopt a resolution that Arab diplomats said was meant to refute Bush's position that Israel could not be expected to give up all its West Bank settlements or accept the return of Palestinian refugees in a Middle East peace deal.
The resolution also made clear that Israel could not speak for the occupied territories at the United Nations, they said.
Palestinian U.N. Observer Nasser al-Kidwa said the measure was "of extreme importance" as it reaffirmed that Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East War was "territory under military occupation" and that the Palestinian people "have the right to self-determination and to exercise sovereignty on their territory."
The UN vote was 140 to 6- the US, Israel, and the tiny Pacific island countries of the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru and Palau voting against world opinion supporting Palestinian soveriegnty. The countries thay abstained from the vote were Australia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru, Serbia and Montenegro, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Tuvalu.
The most comprehensive and unbiased reportage on this important UN resolution I found is at Electronic Intifada , where you can read about the process as well as the perspectives of different ambassadors and their votes given within the context of the "Quartet" (Representatives of the United Nations, Russia, the European Union, and the United States) "Road Map" to Middle East Peace.
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