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Importance of General Assembly Vote Greatly Exaggerated

(Jerusalem Post) E. Kontorovich - The UN General Assembly only has the power to admit states, not the power to create or determine members' borders. (That role, within the UN system, would fall to the International Court of Justice or the Security Council.) The Security Council has already determined in Resolution 242, adopted in the wake of the Six-Day War, that Israel need not return all of the land it took in that conflict. Thus it is meaningless to speak of the General Assembly recognizing Palestine with any particular set of borders. If General Assembly resolutions controlled Israel's legitimacy, Israel would long have ceased to exist within any borders. The GA in 1975 famously adopted its "Zionism equals racism" resolution, condemning the very project of a Jewish state in the Middle East within any borders. Yet the endorsement of the idea by an overwhelming vote did not make it real or true. When friends of Israel fret about delegitimization by the General Assembly, they unwittingly give the body more power than it has. The writer is a professor of law at Northwestern University.
2011-04-13 00:00:00
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