*United Nations: *A senior Palestinian official on Wednesday criticized USAmbassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and her pledge to “take names”of countries that do not back Washington, saying she had not been appointed”the schoolmarm of the world.”
Haley first warned she would take names when she arrived at the UnitedNations in January last year. She reiterated it ahead of a U.N. GeneralAssembly vote in December when more than 120 countries voted for aresolution calling for the United States to drop its recognition ofJerusalem as Israel’s capital.
“She threatened and she pressured and she used coercion and so on at theU.N., particularly by taking down names. I don’t think people appointed herthe schoolmarm of the world,” Hanan Ashrawi, a senior official at thePalestine Liberation Organization (PLO), told reporters at the UnitedNations.
The US mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to arequest for comment on Ashrawi’s remarks.
As the US opened its embassy in contested Jerusalem on Monday, dozens ofPalestinians were killed in gunfire and tear gas from Israeli troops on theGaza-Israel border, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The U.N. SecurityCouncil met on Tuesday over the violence.
“Those who suggest that the Gaza violence has anything to do with thelocation of the American embassy are sorely mistaken. Rather, the violencecomes from those who reject the existence of the state of Israel in anylocation,” Haley told the council.
She said Hamas in Gaza – instigated the violence, an allegation denied bythe militant group, which opposes Israel’s existence.
Ashrawi rejected Haley’s assessment that the opening of the US embassy wasnot linked to the Gaza border demonstrations. Palestinian leaders havecalled Monday’s events a massacre, and the Israeli tactic of using livefire against the protesters has drawn worldwide concern and condemnation.
“It’s extremely difficult to find any relationship between reality and thewords we hear coming out from the American representative here,” Ashrawisaid.