UNIFIL financing – GA general debate, vote – Verbatim record

Official Records

General Assembly
Sixty-first session
104th plenary meeting
Friday, 29 June 2007, 10 a.m. 
New York

    The meeting was called to order at 10.25 a.m.

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Agenda item 144 (continued)

Financing of the United Nations peacekeeping forces in the Middle East 

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 (b)   United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon

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  The President : We will now take a decision on the draft resolution entitled, “Financing of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon”. A single separate vote has been requested on the fourth preambular paragraph and operative paragraphs 4, 5 and 20 of the draft resolution. As there is no objection to that request, I shall now put to the vote the fourth preambular paragraph and operative paragraphs 4, 5 and 20, on which a single separate and recorded vote has been requested.

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  The draft resolution as a whole was adopted by 141 votes to 2, with 1 abstention (resolution 61/250 C) .

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  Mr. Ja’afari (Syrian Arab Republic) (spoke in Arabic ):  …

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  The Israeli representative also referred to the existence of Palestinian refugee camps and military sites in Lebanon, as if those camps and sites had nothing to do with Israel’s occupation of Palestine and as if the Palestinian refugees had come from outer space and not from Palestine, from where they had been expelled, and as if those Palestinians had no relevance to resolution 194 (III), concerning the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the lands, villages and homes from which they had been forcibly expelled by Zionist gangs, first in 1948 and then in 1967.

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    The Israeli representative also said that Syria’s position threatens stability in the Middle East . That is his opinion and he is entitled to it, but he has forgotten that a survey undertaken in Europe last year under the aegis of the European Commission confirmed that 70 per cent of Europeans — Europeans, not Syrians — consider Israel to be a threat to international peace and security . He also neglected to mention that more than 1,000 resolutions have been adopted by the United Nations since its establishment condemning Israel and declaring it an aggressive occupying Power because it continues to terrorize the Palestinian people, preventing it from establishing its own State, and to occupy the lands of others by force, including territories of my country in the Syrian Golan.

  How can the Israeli representative offer advice in this context? His State is notorious throughout the world, and over 1,000 resolutions of international legitimacy have passed against it. Not one of those resolutions, nor even a single paragraph thereof, has been implemented. Israel takes “international legitimacy” to mean the implementation of merely half a resolution — resolution 181 (II), of 1947, partitioning Palestine into two States. That resolution referred to the establishment of two States in Palestine: a Jewish State and an Arab Palestinian State. Israel has implemented only that half of the resolution, one of as many as a thousand, referring to the creation of its own State. As for the other half, it can go to hell as far as Israel is concerned. Israel is not concerned about upholding justice or the establishment of the Palestinian State in Palestine.

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  The meeting rose at 12.05 p.m.

This record contains the text of speeches delivered in English and of the interpretation of speeches delivered in the other languages. Corrections should be submitted to the original languages only. They should be incorporated in a copy of the record and sent under the signature of a member of the delegation concerned to the Chief of the Verbatim Reporting Service, room C-154A. Corrections will be issued after the end of the session in a consolidated corrigendum.