Protection of Palestinians remains a UN concern.

The protection of Palestinian civilians under Israeli occupation remained a grave preoccupation of the international community, Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar told the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People at its opening session on 6 February.

Although the world was preoccupied with the crisis in the area of the Persian Gulf, it should not turn its attention from the question of Palestine. That, he said, was the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which touched, directly or indirectly, millions of people and many countries.

In the first three months of 1991, there were a number of developments related to the UN role in the Middle East, including Security Council action on the Palestinian situation.

Council President Bagbeni Adeito Nzengeya of Zaire on 4 January read a statement on members' behalf, following consultations on the situation in the occupied Arab territories.

Council members deplored the "recent acts of violence in Gaza, especially actions by Israeli security forces against Palestinians, which led to scores of casualties among those civilians".

They reaffirmed the applicability of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention--which calls for the protection of civilians during time of war--to all Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem, and asked that Israel, the occupying Power, fully comply with the Convention's provisions.

They continued to support Council resolution 681 (1990), which calls for the monitoring and observation of the situation of Palestinian civilians under Israeli occupation.

Palestinians expelled

On 8 January, the Secretary-General strongly deplored Israel's decision to expel four Palestinians from the occupied territories. The action, he said, directly contravened the Fourth Geneva Convention. Israeli authorities should permit those who had been deported to return to their homes, he stated.

The International Committee of the Red Cross reported that those expulsions had brought to 66 the number of persons expelled from the occupied territories since the beginning of the intifadah--the Palestinian uprising--in December 1987.

On 27 March, Council members deplored another Israeli decision to expel four Palestinian civilians from the occupied territories and called upon it to desist from deporting Palestinians from the territories and to ensure the safe return of those deported. Two were employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestines Refugees in the Near East. Council President Peter Hohenfellner of Austria made the statement following consultations.

In it, Council members expressed grave concern over the continued deterioration of the situation in the occupied territories, "and especially by the current serious situation resulting from the imposition of curfews by Israel".

Israel objects

Israel has categorically objected to the idea of convening a meeting of the high contracting parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, as advocated by the Secretary-General in December 1990.

On 21 March, Israel called the proposal "an astonishing act of singling out Israel". In the 40 years the Convention had been in effect, it said, millions of innocent civilians had been killed, and the international community had not once seen fit to convene the signatories to address the violations. Israel had undertaken to apply all the humanitarian provisions of the Convention on a de facto basis. A meeting of the parties would only politicize an international humanitarian law instrument and thereby undermine its effectiveness, Israel stated (S/22378).