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The Annual UN General Assembly Resolution Calling on Israel to Give Up Nuclear Weapons - "Much Ado about Nothing"
(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Alan Baker - As part of the annual three-month "Israel-bashing" festival at the UN General Assembly, on 7 December 2022, 146 states adopted one of the annual resolutions calling upon Israel to renounce possession of nuclear weapons and to place its nuclear facilities under international supervision. Substantively and legally speaking, such resolutions, like all General Assembly resolutions, have no binding legal authority and represent nothing more than the collective, partisan political viewpoint of the automatic majority of states that regularly vote against Israel, no matter what the subject. The resolution was sponsored by the Palestinians together with 20 Arab and African countries, including Israel's allies in the Middle East such as Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the UAE. It merely copies the eight previous identical resolutions that have been adopted every year since 2015. Some of the most extreme and fanatical states such as Iran and Syria are parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968. The extent to which such states openly violate their NPT obligations, and persistently threaten Israel, is indicative of the inherent weakness and lack of reliability of the supervision system. Hence, Israel insists on the prior establishment and maintenance of stable regional security conditions. Without such a regional framework, Israel is not prepared to commit itself to the obligations of the NPT while other regional powers maintain a state of war with Israel and constantly threaten Israel's very existence, even while being parties to the NPT. The writer served as the legal advisor to Israel's Foreign Ministry and as Israel's ambassador to Canada.