Sometimes you just have to laugh.
The UN General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution Monday calling on Israel to quickly open its nuclear program for inspection and backing a high-level conference to ban nuclear weapons from the Middle East which was just canceled.
All the Arab nations and Iran had planned to attend the conference in mid-December in Helsinki, Finland, but the United States announced on Nov. 23 that it wouldn’t take place, citing political turmoil in the region and Iran’s defiant stance on nonproliferation. Iran and some Arab nations countered that the real reason for the cancellation was Israel’s refusal to attend.
The resolution, approved by a vote of 174-6 with 6 abstentions, calls on Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty “without further delay” and open its nuclear facilities to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Those voting “no” were Israel, the US, Canada, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.
The Arab proposal to create a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone in the Mideast, and to pressure Israel to give up its undeclared arsenal of perhaps 80 nuclear warheads, was endorsed at an NPT conference in 1995 but never acted on. In 2010, the 189 parties to the 1970 treaty called for convening a conference in 2012 on the establishment of a WMD-free zone in the Middle East.
But Israel has long said there first must be a Mideast peace agreement before the establishment of a Mideast zone free of weapons of mass destruction. The region’s Muslim nations argue that Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal presents the greatest threat to peace in the region.
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement is marching hand-in-hand with Hamas, which has offered the movement, founded by Yasser Arafat, “to put our hands together and carry the gun.”
The rift between the two rival factions seemed irreparable in 2007, when Hamas ousted the Fatah leadershipfrom Gaza in a bloody militia war of both sides’ terrorist wings, which they say exist for “armed resistance."
After years of failed efforts to settle a power struggle and re-unite, Hamas’ diplomatic victory after Israel’s Pillar of Defense counterterrorist operation last month, and Abbas’ move for implicit recognition by the United Nations, changed the course.
Fatah and Hamas fought side-by-side in the missile war against Israel, according toHanan al-Qassas, the Gaza-based chief of Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, quoted by he Bethlehem-based Ma'an news agency.
The ceasefire after Pillar of Defense elevated Hamas to a diplomatic position of direct negotiations with Egypt and which were accepted by Israel as well as the United States, where Hamas is officially designated as an illegal terrorist organization.
Hamas then reversed course and accepted Abbas' UN ploy, adding that it was a step towards taking over all of Israel as “Palestine.”
Senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar on Monday said at a ceremony on Monday, "Come to the program of resistance and stop wasting time and efforts, let’s put our hands together and carry the gun.
"I tell Fatah members, those who want to participate on the ride of the victors and who want to celebrate and feel that he’s honored and carry the gun, we open our arms to them on the basis of resistance and to liberate Palestine, all Palestine, and those who want to do different than this we tell them we know our way, which is to Jerusalem.”
The call to unity for terror, or what the Palestinian Authority calls “resistance,” is in direct opposition to what the international community and mainstream media call Abbas’ carefully planned diplomatic route to achieve his political and territorial demands after years of gaining “goodwill” concessions from Israel.
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