The PLO’s Mission to the UN website has a link to a blank page with only a title:
I don’t recall that the UN ever dedicated any year to be the “International Year to End the Israeli Occupation.” So what’s going on?
In August 2016, during the 377th meeting by the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, the PLO representative called upon all UN members to declare 2017 to be the “International Year to End the Israeli Occupation.”
There was some support for the initiative by Namibia, Venezuela, Indonesia, Bangladesh and a few other states.
Mahmoud Abbas also called on the UN to make that declaration when he addressed the body in September.
But it was only three years after the 2014 “International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.” It seems likely that the UN members, already inundated with pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel initiaitves, decided that they PLO had gone too far in trying to hijack the entire UN for their own petty and narrow agenda.
Nothing ever came of this initiative at the UN.
But it seems that the Non Aligned Movement, at its 2016 summit in Venezuela, appears to have endorsed that appellation. It received no press as far as I can tell.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Leave a Reply