OCTOBER 23, 1995

Let me begin by establishing one simple fact. The UN of today, October 1995, is a different United Nations from Israel's point of view, from the one we know just three or four years ago.

We should all remember that for well over a quarter of a century, the U.N. was an arena for diplomatic warfare against Israel. It is difficult to pin point exactly when this campaign began, but 1975 with the General Assembly's resolution branding Zionism as a form of racism was certainly a turning point. Thereafter our Arab friends worked systematically to turn every U.N. Agency into a battle ground. Endless anti-Israel resolutions were passed. Israel was ostracized by the Soviet bloc and by the Non-Aligned group. It was shunned even by the Europeans. In brief, we were publicly pilloried and diplomatically isolated.

Today, I am glad to say the outright warfare is over. True, there is skirmishing here and there. The Syrians in particular are fighting a rear guard action since they are opposed to Israel enjoying any benefits of peace before a comprehensive peace has been achieved in the Middle East. There are also institutional pockets of resistances - for example, in the Human Rights Commission. But by and large Israel has taken its rightful place in the "family of nations". Its vote, its support is courted. We have wider room to manoeuver politically. We have a broader group of countries for diplomatic discourse, including significant countries in the Arab world and in Asia with whom we still don't have diplomatic relations.

You might ask, have the U.N.'s attitude or policies changed towards Israel? The answer is no. After all, the U.N. does not have an existence of its own. At the end of the day, it is the sum of its parts, that is the totality of its member states. If it has policies at all, they are the lowest common denominator between the member states.

Moreover, one cannot talk about the U.N. as a whole. It is a complicated organization, a kind of heterogeneous conglomerate of international agencies, bodies, commissions and what have you - each of them with a separate "personality" and a different focus.

There are those, by the way, who challenge this view. They would argue, legitimately, that improved bilateral relations - between Israel and other countries - are one thing, but put those countries together, in the U.N. environment, and the "herd instinct" takes over. Perhaps. There is a difference between collective state behavior and individual state behavior. But I believe that even institutional or corporate manners can change. At the U.N., they have changed most vividly vis-a-vis South Africa. And, I submit, they are in the process of change vis-a-vis Israel.

The real answer is that the world - and Israel's place within it - has changed fundamentally over the last three to four years. Just by way of example, from our perspective, Israel has relations with 153 countries in the U.N. today, in comparison with only 95 countries in 1991. This radical improvement in Israel's position is a clear product of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Gulf War and the peace process - all of which can be pegged,to the year 1991.

More than anything else, the peace process has been a positive factor for Israel - paying dividends not just politically and strategically in the Middle East and economically beyond it, but also diplomatically in the international arena. These positive changes are demonstrably reflected through the multilateral lens at the U.N.

So what about the other side of the coin? Has Israel's attitude to the U.N. changed? Again the answer is not really. Israel remains leary of the U.N. having been burned so often and treated so badly in the past.

But then, I would argue that countries do not have "attitudes". They have interests. And Israel's interests in the U.N. have definitely changed.

National interests at the U.N. vary. For some, the organization is a vehicle to try to project to their national power - witness the competition over membership in the Security Council. For others, it is a venue to prove that they exist. Indeed, the smaller a country is, the more important the U.N. may be for them as, in a certain sense, it gives them parity with the big boys.

However, for Israel today, the U.N. is an instrument - just one instrument among several - to strengthen its international position. It is a framework to help weave Israel inextricably into the fabric of international society. And it is a channel to allow Israel to contribute positively to global issues, such as disarmament, health, the environment and world trade, to mention only a few.

It goes without saying that new interests demand new courses of action. Until recently, we, Israel, dealt almost exclusively with Arab-Israel conflict in the U.N. Essentially we were engaged in damage control. Today, however, Israel is seeking active involvement in the U.N. - and that, I should suggest, is a strategic change in direction.

From this, certain corollaries follow:

If Israel is to be involved, to be an insider, then it has to be a player. If Israel is to be a player, then it needs a level playing field. And if Israel is to be a significant player, it needs to contribute constructively. That is our new direction. That is where we are headed.

This might all sound very theoretical. So the next question that arises is how to translate the theory into practice? We have perhaps two broad guidelines at what one can call the tactical level:

a) cut away the negative legacy of the past;

b) seek out openings wherever they may exist for positive involvement.

We are clearly talking about,a process, about something which is going to happen over time. The process already began two or three years ago and so, if I may, I would like to focus on the record for this year just passed, until September-October 1995.

I am speaking mainly about the Agencies here in Geneva and I will try to work within the two guidelines I have just mentioned.

a) Starting with the elimination of the legacy of the past or what you simply might call "garbage disposal":

Perhaps our most concrete achievement this year was in the International Labor Organization. For years now, that Organization has held a "Special Sitting" or session on Israel and the territories during its annual Assembly. We were the only country so privileged and the event was simply an occasion for Israel-bashing.

This year, the Organization decided that enough is enough and that there would be no more special sessions. So that evil is behind us.

Anti-Israel resolutions:

Their number is slowly diminishing but the truth is that because of the way the U.N. works, they are hard to eliminate altogether. Moreover, there is now something of a dilemma because although the Arab sponsors are occasionally prepared to soften the anti-Israel language, the substance of those resolutions remains completely unacceptable.

So we have adopted a different tack. We have preferred to support "positive resolutions", generally passed by consensus, in favor of the Middle East Peace Process. This year such resolutions have been passed, not just in the General Assembly, but also in the Human Rights Commission, the World Health Assembly (WHO) and the Economic and Social Council

(ECOSOC).

In the Human Rights Sub-Commission, there was a complete innovation because, for the first time in history, in addition to the traditional and misplaced demands on Israel to observe human rights, there was a clear call on the Palestinian Authority to respect human rights. This was a step in the right direction, even if the resolution as a whole remained far from satisfactory.

On the level of old-fashioned "damage control", we have managed to prevent attempts by the PLO to upgrade its status in a number of international organizations as we all approach the next and final stage of the peace negotiations with the Palestinians, beginning May of next year. The processes are complex and I will only mention by way of example the Universal Postal Union (UPU) and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), both of which held major meetings just last month.

b) Now on the side of positive involvement:

Israel successfully sought election to the Governing Bodies of various UN agencies.

- We were elected to the Executive Committee of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO);

- Israeli experts were elected to the Treaty Bodies on the Convention on Civil and Political Rights, and also the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

- Our representative on the Governing Body of the International Labor Organization (ILO) was elected to the Board of its major training institute at Turin.

-An Israeli was elected to the Executive Committee of the World Tourist Organization.

- And finally, let me mention an election that we did not win. We were almost elected to the Chairmanship of the Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO). OK - we lost to the Chinese candidate because of Arab pressure. But the fact is that two or three years ago, Israel could never have seriously contemplated running a candidate for such high office.

In addition, we have begun to make active contributions to various agencies and other international frameworks:

- regional seminars for the Economic Council for Europe (ECE) have been held in Israel on issues like renewable energy.

- in September a meeting of the European Region of WHO was held in Jerusalem;

- also in September the Israel Air Force joined with the Jordanian Air Force in flying emergency supplies to Bosnia;

- Last year we had an Israeli observer, for the first time ever, in the ex-Yugoslavia and we have one lined-up to go to Burundi;

- Last year we have proposed the opening of an international training center in Israel for the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Let me go further with something even more dramatic from our point of view. It is not just Israel which is seeking openings in the U.N. - International bodies are now seeking out Israel and its expertise. For example:

- the Conference on Disarmament (CD) extended membership to Israel in September - admittedly to a number of other countries as well, but Israel's membership (and Iraq's) had definitely been problematic.

- A new environmental organization, dealing with Bio-Diversity, is actively seeking Israel's expertise in arid and semi-arid regions;

- the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) has opened a way for Israel to become a full member should a decision in that direction be taken.

Still more on the positive side of the ledger:

We have encouraged visits to Israel by high-level officials:

- in May, the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, Mr. Vladimir Petrovsky, attended a seminar at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem marking the U.N.'s 50th Anniversary;

- in June, the President of the International Red Cross, Mr. Cornelio Sommaruga, went on a visit to Israel;

- in September, Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) was in Israel;

- in October, Mr. Yvon Chotard, the Chairman of the Governing Body of the International Labor Office (ILO) visited Israel;

- in December, the Director-General of ILO, Mr. Michel Hansenne, will be in Israel;

- in January, the Director-General of the Universal Postal Union (UPU), Mr. Thomas Leavey, will also go to Israel

Altogether, this list for an eight month period is impressive.

All this is not happening in a vacuum. The PLO is showing signs for becoming more pragmatic and even of lowering its profile in certain agencies. At ECOSOD this summer, it did not re-introduce an anti-Israel resolution and it virtually absented itself from meetings of the Human Rights Sub-Commission and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

But perhaps more than anything else, the Arabs can no longer argue that the Middle East conflict should dominate international debate. That conflict is no longer at center stage. At the Human Rights Commission, the burning issues were Bosnia, China and Chechnya. At the Social Development Summit in Copenhagen in May and at the Women's Summit in Beijing in September, there was virtually no mention of Israel in the debates and, more significantly, there was absolutely no mention of Israel in the final documents produced by those gatherings.

This is the trend - and it is very clear. But this is not to say that it has been easy going, that everything we have tried to do has been crowned with success. Far from it. We have had failures, and we still have a long way to go.

The biggest "lapsus" is the ongoing "fact of life" that almost all UN bodies work by a system of regional groups. Geographically, Israel is part of Asia. Ideologically, Israel is part of a group called "West Europeans and Others" (WEOG) which includes countries like Canada, Australia and Japan among the "others". Neither of these groups is prepared to accept Israel, and thus Israel is denied the benefits, which are considerable, of membership of a regional group. This is a real problem, which has gone on almost from the outset of our relationship with the UN and which we have so far been unable to overcome.

In brief, the days of the Messiah have not yet come. The UN is still no paradise for Israel. It is simply a little more congenial, and we can begin to do something worthwhile. And I would expect that if we meet again this time next year, I will have more progress to report. I certainly hope so.

Thank you very much.