Tel Aviv Tribune Net correspondents
Kampala- The “Non-Aligned Countries” movement failed to come up with a resolution that represents a true condemnation of Israel, and deviates from denunciation, denunciation and solidarity. Uganda’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Adonia Ibare, said that “the political declaration on Palestine includes an affirmation of support for the Palestinian people, and a call for a ceasefire.”
Ibari added after meetings of the Palestine Committee that “the movement avoided using unagreed upon terminology, and decided to encourage South Africa’s approach to the International Court of Justice,” and stressed that “the movement will abide by what the court decides.”
The ambassador, who spoke on behalf of the committee, considered that the movement represents a political and not a legal grouping, and that is why the description “genocide” was not adopted.
Ibari’s words come at the end of intense discussions behind closed doors that marked the days of the first four meetings of the Non-Aligned Countries.
Disagreement over terminology
The Israeli aggression against Gaza imposed the Palestine file at the forefront of the work of the two meetings, and included intense discussions and legal debate about the formula and content that the movement would adopt in the political declaration on Palestine.
Both South Africa and Namibia adhered to their position that what the Gaza Strip is witnessing is genocide, and demanded that the term be used in the political declaration as the most accurate and legally reliable one to apply the principle of accountability and accountability against Israel.
However, India (the founding member state of the movement) objected to the use of the term, followed by Singapore in an identical position. The positions of the countries that make up the committee crystallized successively, siding with the Indian and Singaporean positions, according to what was reported in press leaks from the closed sessions, attributed to a senior diplomat in the Ugandan Foreign Ministry.
Attempts were made to provide alternative formulations of the terms that could be adopted, according to the Secretary-General of the Ugandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, followed by a statement by Uganda’s representative at the United Nations following the Palestine Committee meeting today, Thursday, saying, “The movement is a political grouping, not a legal one,” and that is why the description of genocide was not adopted. Collective.
Variation in ceilings
For its part, the Palestinian delegation called, over the course of days, through its representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Riyad Mansour, for the importance of adopting a firm position on the necessity of achieving justice for the Palestinian people and condemning the massacres committed against civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Mansour called on member states to support the struggle of the Palestinian people in their journey to end the occupation and achieve their right to establish their state and the return of Palestinian refugees.
South Africa topped the highest positions. In an open session, Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor presented an explanation of the legal basis that her country adopted to go to the International Court of Justice, in prosecuting Israel for the crime of genocide.
Namibia also submitted a plea in which it stated that Palestine is a member state of the movement, whose people are subjected to ethnic cleansing, and Israel is destroying the social environment of the Palestinians, and is practicing a policy of forced displacement against them, and therefore the Israeli war falls from the point of view of the law under the heading of genocide.
Uganda – the organizing country that assumed the presidency of the summit – tried to avoid announcing the details of the dispute, and the Ugandan Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Henry Orem Okello, limited himself to talking about a “discrepancy” related to the wording of the political declaration in terms of the terms that will be included in the political declaration on Palestine, and hinted that one of the nodes “It may be related to the expression genocide.”
The movement and Palestine
The positions of the 120 countries regarding the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip vary at the individual levels related to each country’s foreign relations, but the war on the Strip showed the extent of the difference in what members of the movement described as “the most important issue,” which requires taking a decisive position in the political declaration on Palestine.
These differences were reflected from the first day of the launch of the meetings of senior officials of the group’s countries in Uganda, and members of them played a leadership role in pushing for a position consistent with the founding principles of the movement itself, and the struggle of its countries and their struggle over the past century against colonialism and occupation.
Not all of the movement’s countries went to Kampala with similar or even close positions. While some countries played a leadership and arduous role in managing mediation that may be one of the most complex in similar conflict situations, as the State of Qatar did, other countries took an unprecedented step at the legal level, as South Korea did. In Africa, there were other countries whose reactions did not go beyond denouncing “mutual violence” and others who aligned themselves with Israel.
Since the Palestine Liberation Organization joined the movement as an observer member, and then gained full membership, the movement has adopted a position consistent with the United Nations regarding “the two-state solution and the right of the Palestinian people to establish their state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital,” but the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip It showed a face that the movement had long sought to keep away from intense controversy.