Libyan envoy says Gaza worse than Nazi camps
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A Libyan envoy who compared the situation in Gaza to the Holocaust went further on Thursday, saying it was worse than in Nazi concentration camps because of regular Israeli bomb attacks.
"It is more than what happened in the concentration camps," Libya's deputy permanent U.N. representative, Ibrahim Dabbashi, told reporters. "There is the bombing, daily bombing (by Israel) ... in Gaza. It was not in the concentration camps."
"It is worse than that," said Dabbashi, who holds the rank of ambassador.
U.S. envoy Alejandro Wolff rejected the Libyan statement. He was one of several Western diplomats who walked out of a U.N. Security Council discussion on Gaza on Wednesday after Dabbashi compared the situation in the Gaza Strip to the Holocaust.
Wolff told reporters the remarks "reflect a degree of historical ignorance and moral insensitivity that is one of the large reasons this council has been unable to act on Middle East issues and why peace in the Middle East is so difficult."
The French, British, Belgian, Croatian and Costa Rican envoys also left the council on Wednesday after Dabbashi made his remarks. Such protests against fellow Security Council members are rare, diplomats said.
Israel, which withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005 but still controls its airspace, coastal waters and main goods crossings, regularly launches incursions and air strikes that it says target militants responsible for cross-border rocket fire and other attacks.
Israel's U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman told reporters at a lunch organized by The Israel Project, an independent nongovernmental organization, that allowing Libya on the council was a mistake that had "paralyzed" the chief U.N. body responsible for maintaining international peace and security.
"Libya has made it absolutely impossible to reach any kind of...statement on the situation in the Middle East," he said.
FORMER PARIAH
After decades of isolation as a pariah of the West, Libya was elected to the council last year after the United States dropped its opposition. It is the only Arab state on the council and will have its seat until the end of 2009.
In January, Israel sealed border crossings with the Gaza Strip in response to Palestinian rocket attacks against southern Israel.
The United Nations has warned that closing Gaza's borders has resulted in a humanitarian crisis for the territory's 1.5 million people, most of whom depend on foreign aid.
Libya and other council members have been pushing for the Security Council to condemn the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which the United Nations says has made it very difficult to deliver food and medicine and has severely damaged the economy.
The United States insists any council action would also have to include a condemnation of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which seized power in Gaza in June 2007, and the rocket attacks against Israel. Libya opposes this.
Six million Jews were systematically murdered by Nazi Germany during World War II in the Holocaust.
(Editing by David Storey)
