Kuwait asked the UN Security Council to “guarantee the safety and protection of the Palestinian civilian population,” and to consider the deployment of “an international protection mission,” the AP reported on Friday. Kuwait is a current member of the UNSC.
The draft circulated by Kuwait demands that Israel “immediately cease its military reprisals, collective punishment and unlawful use of force against civilians, including in the Gaza Strip.”
The resolution has no chance of passing while the United States remains a staunch defender of Israel’s right to defend itself against infiltrators from the Gaza Strip, so that if the resolution is put to a vote it would be vetoed. However, it would be interesting to see how many of the members, permanent and otherwise, would support the idea.
The last time an international UN force was posted between Israel and the Gaza Strip was in May of 1967, and it packed up and left as soon as Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered it to scram.
This would be as good a time as any to remind readers about the 1990-91 “Palestinian exodus from Kuwait,” during and after the Gulf War. There were 400,000 “Palestinians” living in Kuwait before the Gulf War. During the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, 200,000 of them left Kuwait for fear of persecution, food shortages, lack of medical care, financial shortages, and fear of arrest and mistreatment at roadblocks by the invading Iraqis.
Enter PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who picked the wrong horse in the Golf conflict, embracing Saddam Hussein. So after the war, nearly 200,000 “Palestinians” were pushed out of Kuwait by the returning royal family, which severely curbed their right to residence and subjected them to abuse by Kuwaiti security forces. In 2004, Mahmoud Abbas officially apologized for the PLO support for the Iraqi invasion in 1991. In 2012, the official PLO embassy in Kuwait was re-opened, and it is estimated that 80,000 “Palestinians” live in Kuwait today.