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JEB SHARP: The United Nations says its resuming aid operations in Gaza. Yesterday, the UN suspended operations there after Israeli gunfire killed a UN driver delivering aid. The UN said it received assurances from Israel today that its workers won't be at risk. Meanwhile, the UN Security Counsel has called for an immediate and durable cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, to be followed by a full Israeli withdrawal. The United States abstained from the vote. Hamas dismissed the UN resolution and so did Israel. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared it “unworkable”. As The World's Jason Margolis tells us, Israel and the UN have a long history of being at odds.

JASON MARGOLIS: Israel has had a contentious relationship with the United Nations since the 1970s. It came to a head in 1974 when Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat was invited to address the UN General Assembly.

LINDA JAMISON: And remember back in the ‘70s, the PLO was still a terrorist organization. So here, Yasser Arafat shows up in 1974 to address the World body, and on his hip he's wearing a side-arm.

MARGOLIS: Linda Jamison is a UN expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. In 1975, the UN gave the PLO permanent status to be an observer at the UN.

JAMISON: Here Israel was having to be in the room with the organization whose primary goal was to wipe the state off the planet. So the whole relationship has been one of discomfort and one of great contention.

MARGOLIS: That same year, the UN also passed a resolution stating that “Zionism is a form of racism”. The resolution condemns Zionism as an imperialist ideology that threatens world peace. Steven Groves is with the conservative Washington think tank The Heritage Foundation.

STEVEN GROVES: If you're looking for reasons why Israel was skeptical of the UN system, their entire existence was declared to be racist. Zionism meaning the, you know, the immigration of Jews to Israel to form a Jewish state. They had declared it as racist.

MARGOLIS: The resolution was revoked 16 years later. Still, Groves says the UN continues to issue a disproportionate number of condemnations towards Israel.

GROVES: If you count up all the resolutions that the human rights council passes, its something like one-quarter of the resolutions involve Israel and are critical of Israel.

MARGOLIS: As a result, Groves adds, Israel doesn't always pay attention.

GROVES: As it is right now, Israel does not seem to be responding to the UN's declarations, and we don't know if they will. Even the Security Council resolution that passed unanimously except for the United States, who abstained. Israel may take that as a sign of, “Well, we don't really need to pay attention to what's going on in the Security Counsel until the US gets more involved.”

MARGOLIS: Its not just Israel that dismissed the current UN resolution; Hamas did, too. Steven Cole is the Director of Worldpublicopinion.org. His organization recently polled people in seven majority Muslim nations. He says respondents would like the UN to be more robust on the world stage. But they see a problem with the organization.

STEVEN COLE: There is a perception that the US essentially controls the United Nations. And so it's more than just the US blocks resolutions that are critical of Israel. There's a perception that the US really has control over everything that the UN does, and thus prevents the UN from being effective in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

MARGOLIS: The UN can't force Hamas or Israel to stop the fighting; it has no enforcement capability. But a resolution from the UN is a strong barometer of world opinion – a statement that the global community is watching. For The World, I'm Jason Margolis.

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