A dispatch from the United Nations in today's New York Times reports, "Mr. Annan today downplayed his choice of the word 'illegal,' saying that the Security Council and the General Assembly had already used it to describe Israel's occupation and some of its actions against Palestinians." That is a falsehood, which the Times allows Mr. Annan to get away with unchallenged.
Set aside the question of the General Assembly -- that was the collection of tyrannies that, on November 10, 1975, declared by vote of 72 to 35, with 32 abstentions, that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." Given how discredited the General Assembly's record has been on Israel, it is both telling and troubling that Mr. Annan would cite it in defense of his own remarks.
Look instead at the Security Council, which the Mr. Annan claims has used the word "illegal" to describe Israel's "occupation." Look through the most one-sided anti-Israel U.N. Security Council resolutions, dating from the darkest days of the Carter administration -- Security Council resolutions 446, 452 and 465. Two of these resolutions -- 446 and 465 -- state that the Israeli housing on the West Bank has "no legal validity." Two of them -- 452 and 465 -- state that Israel is violating the Fourth Geneva Convention. But that is different from using the word "illegal" to describe Israel's actions. The word "illegal" never appears. It is a subtle distinction but an important one. An action can have "no legal validity" without being "illegal." If the editor of Smartertimes.com claimed the U.N. headquarters building as his new home, the action would have no legal validity, but it would not be illegal. A U.N. resolution stating that "The editor of Smartertimes.com's claim on the U.N. headquarters building has no legal validity" is different from a resolution saying "the editor of Smartertimes.com's claim on the U.N. headquarters building is illegal." The first is a declaration that a claim has no lasting legal standing; the second is a claim that a law has been broken. In any case, the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs that have taken place since the Madrid Conference in 1991 have been on the basis of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, not these other resolutions. Mr. Annan's invocation of the Security Council resolutions from the U.N.'s bad old days of "Zionism is a form of racism" will have the effect of undermining the Arab-Israeli negotiations that Mr. Annan claims to be so concerned with preserving.