Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is to award his people’s highest honor to UN official Rima Khalaf who resigned last week after being reprimanded by UN Secretary General António Guterres over a report that accused Israel of establishing an "apartheid regime."
Abbas informed Khalaf by phone on Sunday that she would receive the Palestine Medal of the Highest Honor in recognition of her “courage and support” for the Palestinian people.
Khalaf, a UN undersecretary-general, resigned Friday after refusing to withdraw her report for the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA). Published last Wednesday, the paper said "available evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid" while "systematically institutionalizes racial oppression and domination of the Palestinian people as a whole."
The report written for the Beirut-based ESCWA slammed Israel’s Law of Return, “conferring on Jews worldwide the right to enter Israel and obtain Israeli citizenship regardless of their countries of origin and whether or not they can show links to Israel-Palestine, while withholding any comparable right from Palestinians, including those with documented ancestral homes in the country,” as a policy of “demographic engineering” meant to uphold Israel’s status as the Jewish state.
The report further accused Israel of “practices” that have fragmented Palestinians, arguing that it is the “principal method by which Israel imposes an apartheid regime.”
The paper was compiled by Richard Falk, a Princeton professor emeritus with a long track record of vehemently anti-Israel rhetoric, and by Virginia Tilley, an American political scientist who authored the book 'The One-State Solution'. Haley described Falk as “a man who has repeatedly made biased and deeply offensive comments about Israel and espoused ridiculous conspiracy theories.”
World Jewish Congress CEO Robert Singer called the report "far from a serious or objective study" and said: "Instead, it’s a piece of propaganda aimed at slandering the State of Israel and at denying Israel’s right to exist even in its pre-1967 borders."
