It's busy condemning Jewish residency rights in the territory ofj the Jewish National Home as decided by its forerunner, the League of Nations, a decision Article 80 of the UN Charter upholds as still valid today*.
Read on:
UN slams plan to authorize outpost, Shiloh homes
The United Nations on Wednesday condemned Israeli plans to authorize both the Shvuet Rachel outpost and 180 already existing homes in the Shiloh settlement, located in the Binyamin region of the West Bank.
These actions are “deplorable and move us further away from the goal of a two-state solution,” said UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Robert Serry.
“The Secretary-General reiterated the UN’s well known position that settlement activity is illegal, contrary to Israel’s obligations under the Road Map and will not be recognized by the international community.”
...Final approval of a zoning plan for both for the settlement and the outpost, would retroactively legalize all existing homes in Shiloh and Shvuet Rachel.
...The Defense Ministry’s settlement adviser Eitan Broshi said that the Higher Planning Council’s actions on Wednesday were a piece of that process. He clarified that the Council’s actions on Wednesday moved the plans to the next level in the bureaucratic process, but that it could still take a number of months before the plans were finally approved.
He took issues with Peace Now’s designation of the construction as “illegal” and with the description of Shvuet Rachel as an outpost, even though it was classified as such in the 2005 report which attorney Talia Sasson presented to the government.
“Shvuet Rachel is a neighborhood of the Shiloh settlement,” he said.
The new zoning plan, he said, adjusts a technical problem for homes in Shiloh, including in the neighborhood of Shvuet Rachel, that lack all the proper paperwork.
All the homes in question, Broshi said, were constructed on state land and should be authorized.
...If these homes are authorized, it would more than double the size of both communities, Ofran said. "The government is giving a prize to building offenders and continuing the system by which every time the settlers build without permits, the government approves the construction and allows them even more construction,” Peace Now said.
Mr. Serry, please read the material following the asterisk.
You won't be sorry.
*
As here:
The view often expressed in the UN that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal in international law ignores the fact that close settlement by Jews on West Bank land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes was to be encouraged and is legally sanctioned by the Treaty of Sevres, article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. Denying this vested legal right by unilaterally passing a resolution that seeks to negate the exercise of that right breaches article 80 of the UN Charter and is a denial of natural justice.
Article 80:
1.Except as may be agreed upon in individual trusteeship agreements, made under Articles 77, 79, and 81, placing each territory under the trusteeship system, and until such agreements have been concluded, nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.
2.Paragraph 1 of this Article shall not be interpreted as giving grounds for delay or postponement of the negotiation and conclusion of agreements for placing mandated and other territories under the trusteeship system as provided for in Article 77.
And as elucidated by Eli Hertz:
The “Mandate for Palestine” is Valid to This Day
The Mandate survived the demise of the League of Nations. Article 80 of the UN Charter implicitly recognizes the “Mandate for Palestine” of the League of Nations.
This Mandate granted Jews the irrevocable right to settle anywhere in Palestine, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, a right unaltered in international law and valid to this day. Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria (i.e. the West Bank), Gaza and the whole of Jerusalem are legal.
The International Court of Justice reaffirmed the meaning and validity of Article 80 in three separate cases:
ICJ Advisory Opinion of July 11, 1950: in the “question concerning the International States of South West Africa.”33
ICJ Advisory Opinion of June 21, 1971: “When the League of Nations was dissolved, the raison d’etre [French: “reason for being”] and original object of these obligations remained. Since their fulfillment did not depend on the existence of the League, they could not be brought to an end merely because the supervisory organ had ceased to exist. ... The International Court of Justice has consistently recognized that the Mandate survived the demise of the League [of Nations].”
ICJ Advisory Opinion of July 9, 2004: regarding the “legal consequences of the construction of a wall in the occupied Palestinian territory.”35
In other words, neither the ICJ nor the UN General Assembly can arbitrarily change the status of Jewish settlement as set forth in the “Mandate for Palestine,” an international accord that has never been amended.
All of western Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, including the West Bank and Gaza, remains open to Jewish settlement under international law.
Professor Eugene Rostow concurred with the ICJ’s opinion as to the “sacredness” of trusts such as the “Mandate for Palestine”:
“‘A trust’ – as in Article 80 of the UN Charter – does not end because the trustee dies ... the Jewish right of settlement in the whole of western Palestine – the area west of the Jordan – survived the British withdrawal in 1948. ... They are parts of the mandate territory, now legally occupied by Israel with the consent of the Security Council.”36
The British Mandate left intact the Jewish right to settle in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. Explains Professor Rostow:
“This right is protected by Article 80 of the United Nations Charter, which provides that unless a trusteeship agreement is agreed upon (which was not done for the Palestine Mandate), nothing in the chapter shall be construed in and of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.
“The Mandates of the League of Nations have a special status in international law. They are considered to be trusts, indeed ‘sacred trusts.’
“Under international law, neither Jordan nor the Palestinian Arab ‘people’ of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have a substantial claim to the sovereign possession of the occupied territories.”
When will the UN and its employees free themselves from anti-Israel and anti-Zionist prejudices as well as, it would assume, simple ignorance?
UPDATE
AP reports about Israel's preliminary approval to build new homes in the West Bank: the timing of the move may further hinder already troubled Mideast peace efforts. It casts a shadow over a trip by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington in March...Speaking to reporters, State Department spokesman Mark Toner declined to comment about the announcement, but said the U.S. policy on settlement activity is clear. "We don't believe it's in any way constructive to getting both sides back to the negotiating table. And we want to see clearly a comprehensive settlement that delineates borders and resolves many of these issues."And they had a pictureby Abir Sultan:
^
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