The Only Gold in the U.N.

By: Gad Nahshon

He is the only "Gold" in the U.N. He was born in this country. He was educated at Columbia University from 1976 to 1984, the year in which he received a Ph.D. He became an expert on Middle East affairs and his dissertation discussed the relationship between the U.S. and the Saudis. Then he developed his academic career and made Aliyah. He built a family and settled in the West Bank.

He later decided to help Bibi Netanyahu and now he is Israel's new voice in the U.N., the organization that on November 29, 1947 voted for the famous "Partition Plan" which gave birth to a new Jewish country, Israel, and also, sad to say, to many problems such as the Jerusalem issue, then defined as "corpus separatum": an internal city to be governed by the U.N.

Indeed, it is very frustrating to serve in the U.N. as a permanent representative of Israel.

The Israeli "Gold" in the U.N. is Dr. Dore Gold who is the eleventh representative over there. In his office, Dr. Gold stated: "The attitude of the U.N. to Israel has not changed in the last years. The Arabs and the Palestinians inside this international organization enjoy an automatic majority, period". Abbu Eban used to say that the U.N. Assembly can find a majority to say that our globe is a triangle.

Dr. Gold believes that he developed his own unique style of a U.N. diplomat: "my uniqueness? I am an academic kind of representative. I am also dedicated to Hasbara" (Hebrew term for explanations, rather than pure propaganda...)

He is, of course, an admirer of Netanyahu, who made his fame in this country when he was Israel's representative at the U.N. For Dr. Gold, the work in the U.N. is hard and he does not foresee on the horizon a new turning point.

The U.N. is, basically, an anti-Israeli organization. Israel suffers from discrimination and is being accused non-stop of wrongdoing. Israel is being condemned almost automatically.

"The secretary of the U.N. promised to change the negative attitude to Israel in the U.N.'s administration", Dr. Gold said.

But this is another issue. Indeed, Israel needs support in the Security Council and in the Assembly. Dr. Gold outlined the picture: "There are 120 states which are automatically pro-Palestinian. So this is very hard for us to function. The European countries recently are following Great Britain, which refuses to follow the U.S.A. and, like France, wants to demonstrate its unique way. France expresses a pro-Palestinian approach. So our status inside the European camp is weak. We have some support in Asia. We have support from some new Muslim countries, such as Bosnia and Azarbijan, for example. Of course, we have excellent relations with Turkey" said Dr. Gold, who is by now a professional, classical diplomat.

Is Israel suffering from discrimination in the U.N.?

Yes. One example is that in order to serve in the Security Council, a state must belong to a regional camp in the U.N. The Arabs, Iraq or Iran objected to the inclusion of Israel in the Asiatic camp.

So Israel cannot be elected to serve with the super powers in the Security Council. We try to find a solution by joining the regional group of Europe, Canada and Australia. But no change in the near future is likely. Another burning issue is Israel's twenty year control of a zone or security strip in Southern Lebanon.

Recently, Israel announced its willingness to negotiate a pullout with Lebanon. It is also willing to apply the U.N.'s Resolution 425 from 1978. For twenty years, Israel had to sacrifice soldiers in order to defend this zone, together with the Lebanese Christian militia called the "South Lebanon Army" (or "Tsadal" in Hebrew). Israel and Tsadal have fought the army of the Hezbollah, a terrorist army which uses partisan techniques to fight against Tsahal.

Today, any new agreement of pullout means reaching agreements with Lebanon, Syria (its patron) and, perhaps, with Iran, which has provided supplies and money to Hezbollah.

Beside the issue of Israel's security, there is also an issue of 100,000 Christians who live in the zone of security.

We know that in Lebanon so many Christians (Menonites) were massacred in the past and were persecuted. Can we trust Lebanon? Can we trust the Syrians who might try to also control this security zone?

Dr. Gold assessed the situation, saying: "The ball is now in the hands of the Lebanese. They have to come forward and negotiate a set of agreements with us. We would like to see the Lebanese army take over."

Is this small army strong enough to fulfill this mission?

Dr. Gold is positive. It is a new, strong, effective army. As to Syria, he believes in Israel's ability to find solutions which will not harm the interests of Syria.

Dr. Gold keeps fighting for the interests of Israel. He is challenging non-stop problems and attacks on Israel's policies such as the case of Har Hama. He is an experienced, innovative diplomat. One can learn about his achievements from his condensed biography.

Dr. Gold served as Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu from June 1996 to June 1997. In this capacity, he dealt extensively with the Prime Minister's contacts in the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Jordan and other parts of the Arab world. He was directly involved in the negotiations leading up to the Hebron Agreement and the "note of the Record" -- which serves as Prime Minister Netanyahu's underlying principle in his negotiations with the Palestinians.

The Ambassador is a prominent expert on the Middle East and on the politics of the Gulf region. He published numerous books on these topics, including a book about the Gulf War for the Israeli Defense Ministry. He has also published articles in Commentary, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Asahi Shinbun, Die Zeit, Haretz, The Jerusalem Post and The Guardian.

From 1987 through 1996, Dr. Gold served as Director of the U.S. Foreign and Defense Policy Project at the Jaffa Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University. In 1991, Dr. Gold was an advisor to the Israeli delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference and subsequent Arab-Israeli talks in Washington. Today, Ambassador Gold still has close ties with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and still serves as his aid.

Dr. Gold's publications include: American Military Strategy in the Middle East: The Implications of the U.S. Regional Command Structure (CENTCOM) for Israel (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense Publications), 1993; Israel as an American Non-NATO Ally: Parameters of Defense and Industrial Cooperation (Boulder: Westview Press), 1992; Arms Control in the Middle East (Boulder: Westview Press), 1990.

The following are some quotations from Dr. Gold's U.N. speeches:

"Beyond the code of conduct, Israel has insisted that the Oslo process be based on the principle of reciprocity. On January 15, 1997, both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Chairman Yasser Arafat specifically committed themselves to implement their mutual obligations on the basis of reciprocity in the "Note for the Record" that was signed by the U.S. Peace Coordinator, Dennis Ross. To this day, while parts of the international community want to place ever mounting pressure on Israel to move on with the peace process, not a single Palestinian commitment that appears in that document, has been implemented:

"Addressing Palestinian claims can help modify the intentions of some of the Arab States to Israel's east. But no stable arrangement can be structured, in the long term, if it addresses intentions alone without taking into account these regional military capabilities. It is possible to reach a permanent status solution between Israel and the Palestinians, that fully takes into account Israel's vital needs for its self-defense. This will require both flexibility and creativity; it will also require new political thinking. Israel and the Palestinians must find a third way between unbridled Palestinian self-determination and the past record of Israeli military control."

"Across the world today, from Ireland to Bosnia and from Afghanistan to Angola, the state system is threatened by dozens of ethno-religious conflicts. Should the principle of unbridled self-determination be applied in every case, the world we know of approximately 185 states will quickly turn into a world of 300 states, in which every tribe and linguistic group seeks independence. This development will not only lead to increasing instability in the Middle East, it will become the principal cause of strategic instability across the entire globe. Forty years after the demise of the European colonial empires, it is imperative that he world find a balance between the free expression of people's national aspirations and the requirements of international security in the Twenty-First Century. For the world has moved from an era in which de-colonization was the primary international concern to an era having to contend with global Lebanonization."


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