U.N. Demands Israel Surrender Its Nuclear Arsenal

The U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) on Wednesday voted with an overwhelming majority on a resolution calling for Israel to get rid of all its nuclear weapons and place its nuclear sites under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The vote at the UNGA First Committee, which deals with disarmament, threats to peace and international security, passed with 149-6. The five nations that voted against the resolution apart from Israel are the United States, Canada, Liberia, Micronesia and Palau.

Ukraine, which came under fire for voting in favor of an October text on a similar anti-Israel resolution, absented itself.

The vote called on Israel to immediately sign the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty and “not to develop, produce, test or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, to renounce their possession and to place all its unsafeguarded nuclear facilities under full-scope IAEA safeguards.”

Israel maintains a policy of nuclear opacity, although foreign estimates put its stockpile between 80 and 400 nuclear warheads.

The nuclear resolution is the latest in a slew of anti-Israel resolutions that have passed through the GA by large margins.

The GA voted in favor of “the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear and all other weapons of mass destruction.”

Israel has always said it would never introduce WMDs to the region.

Israel’s envoy to the U.N. Michal Maayan said after the October resolution passed that the NPT is not relevant as long as countries don’t respect it, and neither is it a catch-all for the “unique security challenges” of the Middle East.

The “untenable” fact that many countries in the region also don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist made it impossible to discuss establishing robust security architecture, she added.

“Four out of five cases of serious violations of the NPT have occurred in the Middle East since it came into force,” she said, citing Iran’s illicit nuclear program and undeclared nuclear activities in Syria.

The anti-Israel resolution joined 14 others that are brought up annually in the General Assembly and pass by huge margins. These include castigating Israel’s “occupation” of the disputed territories (Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem) and the settlement enterprise, while supporting Palestinian rights to these areas as well as supplying the Palestinians with aid.