Israel is to join the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) with which it has been feuding for years, an unnamed Israeli official told the news agency AFP. Israeli membership of the Western European and Others Group (WEOG) in the UN Human Rights Council had been approved and a formal invitation was expected shortly, the official was quoted as saying.
Jerusalem had cut all ties with the Geneva-based council in March 2012 after the body said it would probe how Israeli settlements may be infringing on the rights of Palestinians and only recently re-established cooperation with the UN body, which was reportedly done on condition that it be accepted as a member of the WEOG.
“Though it’s not yet final, we are hopeful that Israel will very soon be admitted into the Human Rights Council’s Western group, putting an end to a longstanding act of discrimination whereby the Jewish state was the only nation to be excluded from a regional group,” said Hillel Neuer, director of UN Watch, an NGO that monitors the United Nations.
Israel has accused the UNHRC of routinely singling it at the council's annual meetings, as well as passing a number of anti-Israel resolutions.
Although geographically located in Asia, hostile Arab and Muslim states have blocked the Jewish state from joining the Asian group on the 47-member council, leaving it without representation within any geographic grouping. "We have finally been admitted as a member of a geographic group, which means that our relations with the UN bodies in Geneva will be more or less normalized," the ‘Jerusalem Post’ quoted an unnamed Israeli official as saying. "The exclusion and marginalization from which Israel suffered will start to be removed," the official told the paper.