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Ambassador Manzo's Presence at the Knesset is Shameful Disu Kamor
The Israeli daily, Haaretz, reported on Tuesday 15th of May, 2007 that Nigeria's ambassador to Israel, Dr. Manzo George Anthony, joined six of his counterparts on the day before, Monday 14th of May, at a festive gathering at the Israeli Knesset, celebrating 40 years of 'Jerusalem's reunification'. The ambassadors in attendance, 7 of the 109 foreign envoys in Israel, are ambassadors from Georgia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Congo, the Ivory Coast and Honduras. The ambassadors of European Union members, the United States and all other countries represented in Israel boycotted the event because they do not recognize the legitimacy of a unified Jerusalem. The European Union specifically attributes its own boycott to the fact that East Jerusalem remains an occupied nation under international law and thus fails to recognize Jerusalem's reunification. The chairman of Meretz, an Israeli party with members in the Knesset which joined other parties to boycott the gathering, stated "I did not want to lie to myself and participate in this strange event honoring the unification of Jerusalem, which never took place." Also, virtually all of the embassies that had been located in Jerusalem had earlier moved away, leaving only a few holdouts: El Salvador and Costa Rica, which pulled out several months ago. The boycott of Jerusalem by foreign missions and the diplomatic boycott of the annual ritual of the celebration of dispossession of the native Palestinians are painful reminders to Israel that its unilateral redrawing of borders and extension of sovereignty over the eastern part of the city remains illegal in international eyes. One then wonders, despite the clarity of international law and the position of the international community, what legitimate Nigerian national interests the ambassador was securing when he defiantly joined such an outrageous coalition of countries to thaw the diplomatic snub of the gathering.
An historical account of the events that brought about the illegal annexation of the whole of Jerusalem is appropriate at this point as it will underline the seriousness of the decision of the ambassador to attend such an event on behalf of the nation. The entire area of "Jerusalem and its environs" was designated by the United Nations in 1947 (Resolution 181 of 29 November, which also authorized the establishment - a year later - of the State of Israel) designated Jerusalem a "corpus separatum" under international administration, mainly to secure the major Holy Places and the rights of the major religions in Jerusalem.
The illegal annexation of Jerusalem was first brought about by an amendment to the Law and Administrative Ordinance 1948, passed on 27 June 1967, which held, the law, jurisdiction and administration of the state shall extend to any area of Eretz [Land] Israel designated by the government by order. On 28 June 1967 the Israeli authorities used this amendment to designate 30,000 dunums of East Jerusalem, its Old City and the West Bank under Israeli judicial and administrative control. On the same day, and using another amended law, the Israeli Municipality of West Jerusalem extended its borders over those same 30,000 dunums. The Jordanian East Jerusalem Municipality was ordered to cease operations the next day, and Israel completed its illegal annexation under the banner of integration of services. These measures met with strong international condemnation expressed in a series of UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions.
Security Council Resolution 252 (1968) reaffirmed the longstanding legal principle that the acquisition of territory by military conquest was inadmissible, and considered, that all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, including expropriation of land and properties thereon, which tend to change the legal status of Jerusalem are invalid and cannot change that status; The resolution further called on Israel to rescind all such measures and desist from any activity that would tend to change the status of East Jerusalem. Israel did not heed these resolutions and has to this day persisted in policies aimed not only at illegally securing a demographic superiority of the Jewish population in East Jerusalem, but also at isolating East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank with which it is territorially, politically, socially and historically contiguous. In recent years, the Israeli authorities have pursued these illegal policies through the continued expansion of settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, and the construction of the Annexation Wall, the route of which encloses and dissects Palestinian communities, while incorporating illegal Israeli settlements on its western side. These measures are irreconcilable with the Fourth Geneva Convention, which the International Court of Justice has confirmed is applicable to occupied East Jerusalem.
While
Nigeria
joins
Israel to
celebrate 40 years of dispossession in a macabre alliance, the real
mourners are the city's population who sees this occasion as a solemn
moment to take stock of daily lives under brutal occupation reminiscent
of the daily lives under the South African Apartheid. The international
community represented by the
United Nations,
the International Court of Justice, the International Committee of the
Red Cross as well as human-rights experts and organizations, such as
Amnesty International, have repeatedly condemned Israel's unilateral
annexation of East Jerusalem and its activities there as a breach of
International law and also as humanitarian breach. The Nigerian
ambassador therefore shocked the international community by its defiant
presence at the gathering, sending the wrong message that it condones
Israel’s
inhumane status quo. This is beyond hypocrisy; it is a shameful
devaluation of Nigeria's international projected image for fair-minded,
ethical and constructive diplomacy. The driving principles of Nigerian
foreign policy to secure our national interests must be the importance
of the rule of law, including international rule of law. The fact that
Israel's traditional allies snubbed the gathering further makes
Nigeria's presence even more incredible. It is hypocritical that our
ambassador attended a gathering in celebration of long years of complete
disregard to the judgment passed by the International Court of Justice
(ICJ), when our own country just recently ceeded two territories to Chad
and
Cameroon,
on the orders of ICJ. This hypocritical and pathetic position of our
foreign mission in
Israel is
a travesty of justice; it mocks our traditional stand in relation to the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and dealt a resounding slap on us as a
nation concerned with peace and justice. It is extremely worrying that
our foreign envoy in
Israel,
despite its low level of achievement, took this outrageous and flawed
decision without any regard to the direct consequences of its action-
despite being in a highly visible minority situation.
Disu Kamor Director of Media & Communications Muslim Public Affairs Centre, MPAC, Nigeria e-mail: kamor.disu@mpac-ng.org website: www.mpac-ng.org
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