Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the Inner City to Wall Street to the United Nations

Palestine's Shaath Calls Hamas Obstructive, Says Fear of ICC Shows Bad Intent

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 21 -- As Palestine's Nabil Shaath says Mahmud Abbas will ask the Security Council for full UN membership before "going to the General Assembly," Inner City Press asked him about Palestine joining the International Criminal Court, and about the position of Hamas on what his delegation is trying at the UN.

Shaath said the first question, which he said "some Europeans" have been raising, implies that Israel intends to commit crimes. He said Palestine would not file complaints to "harass" Israel, because it would hurt what he called the credibility, of Abbas and the PLO.

"I am not an advocate for Hamas," he said. But he said that in Cairo many good agreements were reached with Hamas, but that no government could be formed, as he said was the case in Lebanon and Iraq too. He said Hamas has two reasons to oppose the UN push: Hamas says it wasn't consulted with sufficiently, and they think the UN moves are "in the air."

Shaath called this "obstructive" and negative. He then spoke about Gazans, if they go to the West Bank, being called "illicit infiltrators" and being sent back to Gaza, as if the two were like "Zimbabwe in the south and Iceland in the north."

Returning to Hamas, he acknowledged they are not represented in the Palestinian delegation to the UN, calling this a political question. "We have not yet regained our unity," he said.

  He was asked which nine countries on the Security Council have recognized Palestine, and would presumably vote for Palestine's application for UN membership. He answered: Russia, China, India, Lebanon, South Africa, Brazil, Bosnia, Gabon and, after a pause, Nigeria.

Shaath, 2d from right, at UN in 1974. Plus ca change

Nine positive votes would then require a veto. Shaath said that Ban Ki-moon has assured there will be no "political" delays in transmitting Palestine's requests, only "procedural" ones. Watch this site.