19/03/2009

Egypt raises a point of order to ask Israel to answer all the recommendations!

Israel’s adoption of the report of the working group this morning was suspended until tomorrow due to a point of order by Egypt.

Today the Human Rights Council (HRC) proceeded to the adoption of the report of the working group on Israel. However, after the Ambassador of Israel presented their responses to the recommendations made during the review, accepting three and commenting issues raised by other recommendations, Egypt raised a point of order. They asked Israel to give a clear position on all recommendations to fully respect resolution 5/1. The President of the Human Rights Council clarified that Israel had until the end of the hour allocated to the adoption to do so. After exhausting the list of speakers, Israel concluded by saying they were taking due note of the remaining recommendations, thus complying in their view to resolution 5/1. But Palestine, Egypt and Yemen asked to suspend the meeting to further discuss the matter, threatening to go to a vote and thus breaking the usual consensus for adoption. Due to time constraint, the President decided to resume the adoption of Israel tomorrow morning Friday 20 March.

This is the first time that States ask for clear responses to recommendations and that they raise a point of order to this end. Israel however is not the first State not to give a clear position on its recommendations. For example, some States such as South Africa, Gabon and Guatemala did not provide any response to their recommendations and other States such as France, Poland and Luxembourg only commented their recommendations without giving clear position.

Countries: Egypt Israel