AJC, a longtime non-governmental organizational supporter of the world body, will meet separately with more than 60 presidents, prime ministers or foreign ministers over the next two weeks, the seventeenth consecutive year AJC will engage in intense and substantive rounds of meetings during the opening of the UN General Assembly.

"We are dismayed that the UN has been obsessed with Israel while too often failing to live up to the founding principles enshrined in its Charter," said Harris. "All member states, regardless of size, will be treated equally, states the Charter, but in practice Israel is not. Israel deserves the same treatment as every other member nation, no better, no worse."

The AJC ad opens with the UN building in New York covered in flags of most UN member states, and then suddenly the flag of Israel peels away.

"The inspiring promise that every member state, regardless of size, will be treated equally is the idea that gave the UN moral force," states the AJC ad. "But what happens when one member state is not treated equally?"

AJC helped ensure the inclusion of the human rights provisions for the UN Charter in 1945, and played an active role in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the creation of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

While AJC remains committed to the founding principles of the UN, "there can be no real reform unless it rectifies the pervasive and corrosive institutional bias against the State of Israel," says AJC.

Notably, the General Assembly adopts each year some 20 blatantly anti-Israel resolutions that hinder rather than advance the cause of peace. The Geneva-based
Commission on Human Rights dedicates disproportionate time and attention to Israel, while ignoring massive violations of human rights in other parts of the world. Indeed, a separate agenda item at the Commission is devoted to Israel, while the other 190 member states are all considered under one agenda item.

Other UN entities, including the Division for Palestinian Rights of the Secretariat, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinians, and the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People, daily expend precious resources to promote the Palestinian cause to the detriment of Israel's fair treatment and any possible progress toward a negotiated two-state solution.

"The average Palestinian's personal income will fall by 40 percent and 67 percent of the population will fall into poverty."

The main culprits are the freeze on direct aid to the Palestinian government imposed by the West after the radical Islamist Hamas movement formed a cabinet in March, and
Israel's withholding of customs duties on goods destined for the Palestinian territories that route through the Jewish state.

Receipts from such duties totaled 65 million dollars per month in 2005, or two-thirds of the Palestinian government revenues, the bank said.

The West and Israel imposed the measures demanding that Hamas renounce violence, recognize the Jewish state and agree to abide past peace agreements between Israel and Palestinians.

If the situation persists, by 2008, unemployment will reach 47 percent, compared with 23 percent in 2005 and 40 percent in 2006, and 74 percent of people will fall into poverty, compared with 44 percent in 2005 and 67 percent in 2006, the bank said.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would meet next week in New York with her counterparts from the so-called Quartet -- Russia, the
European Union and the United Nations -- to discuss how to respond to the unity government idea.

But Washington remained skeptical in the absence of details on the policies of the new unity government and on what role Hamas -- which the US and Israel consider a terrorist group -- would have in the administration.

"At this point, we don't see any qualitative change in the situation vis-a-vis the Palestinian Authority and its policies," McCormack said.

"It is not at all clear that the Palestinians have come to an agreement on a unity government and what the platform of such a unity government would be and who would make up that unity government," he said.

McCormack spoke after European diplomats said a meeting Friday of the 25 EU foreign ministers would likely endorse the unity government and could begin the process of lifting aid restrictions imposed by the Quartet following an unexpected Hamas victory in January legislation elections.

The elections gave Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist and has organized countless suicide bombings and other attacks on the Jewish State, control of the government formally led by the more moderate
Fatah Party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas.

An agreement this week between Abbas and Hamas on forming a joint government that could negotiate with Israel raised hopes for a breakthrough in the stalemate.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy met with Abbas on Thursday in the West Bank town of Ramallah and later suggested it was time to reevaluate the Quartet policy.

"The formation of a Palestinian government of national unity which takes into account the aims of the international community would constitute a major development," he said.

"If it is confirmed, it should lead to a re-examination of the policies of the international community toward the Palestinian government in terms of aid and contacts," he said.

US officials were less upbeat on the likelihood that a government involving Hamas would meet international demands to renounce terrorism, accept Israel's right to exist and abide by past peace agreements.

A senior official on Thursday urged the Europeans not to break ranks and lift sanctions on the Palestinians before the conditions are met.

"One of the reasons why you do actually have some hope now, or just a glimmer of a possibility of a change within the Palestinian political system vis-a-vis willingness to meet those conditions is a unified front," he said.

"People have remained united on this issue, so our view, obviously, is that now is not the time to change that," he said on condition of anonymity.

The US stance reflects the harder line taken by Israel, which was reaffirmed during talks here Wednesday between Rice and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

Speaking to reporters after meeting Rice, Livni said it was up to Abbas to ensure that his Hamas partners abide by the requirements of peace.

"Now is a moment in time in which Mahmud Abbas has to decide whether the Palestinian Authority will operate on his terms or on the terrorists' terms," she said.

Abbas was supposed to issue a "presidential decree" on Thursday dissolving the Hamas-led cabinet and asking Haniyeh to form a unity government, but decided to postpone the move because of the reaction of the Americans and Europeans. He is scheduled to arrive in the Gaza Strip this weekend for additional talks with Haniyeh on the formation of the unity government.

"The US administration does not want the Palestinians to be united," Haniyeh told reporters in Gaza City. "They are placing obstacles on the road to the political rapprochement between us because they want to extort the Palestinian people and the government."

Haniyeh hinted that some European countries had also voiced their opposition to the unity government.

"There are voices in the international community that are also trying to obstruct our efforts to achieve national unity," he said. "We urge the European Union to be more balanced and fair in dealing with our people and their democratically elected government."

Hamas officials expressed fear that Abbas had changed his mind and was no longer planning to ask Haniyeh to head the unity government.

"We understand that the president has come under immense pressure not to ask Haniyeh to serve as prime minister of the national unity government," said one official. "Sadly, some of the pressure is coming from Arab countries like Jordan and Egypt."

According to the official, US, EU and Arab representatives who met with Abbas over the past few days urged him to fire the current government and to establish a Fatah-led emergency cabinet that would run the affairs of the Palestinians until new elections.

More than 48 hours after Abbas and Haniyeh announced that they had reached an agreement on the formation of a national unity coalition, the political program of the unity government remained shrouded in mystery.

While Abbas and his Fatah party maintain that there is a program that explicitly recognizes Israel's right to exist, Hamas insists that the only program they know is the "national reconciliation" document that was drafted earlier this year by some Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

On Thursday, Hamas and Fatah officials admitted that the two sides still haven't reached a full agreement on a joint political program.

Former PA minister Nabil Amr (Fatah) ruled out the possibility that the unity government would win the backing of the US and the Europeans.

"The prisoners' document, which both Hamas and Fatah have endorsed, is unacceptable to the Quartet and that's why we're going to face difficulties," he said.

Jamil Majdalawi, a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - one of the groups that are expected to join the unity government - said most Palestinians still didn't know anything about the political guidelines of the proposed government.

Who is responsible?

Blair has been under fire from may British activists as well as a large number of people from his own party since the start of the war when he refused to call for a ceasefire.

However, despite the walkout from many more left wing Labourites at the Brighton Conference Centre, the prime minister remained steadfast in his views.

In a thinly veiled attack on the Hamas leadership of the Palestinian Authority, Blair said: "The Palestinian leadership are passionate in their condemnation of their treatment by Israel. But don't believe that they don't know why the crisis in Gaza was started and who was responsible."

He also referred to his trip to the Middle East last week, which included meetings with his Israeli counterpart Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora, and welcomed controversial plans for the Palestinians to form a national unity government to include both Hamas and the more moderate Fatah party.

Although many in the international community have welcomed this move, Israel has said it would not recognise any government which includes Hamas unless the organisation denounces terrorism and recognises Israel and any past treaties between Israel and the Palestinians.

Peace hopes

Blair said that during his time in Israel, the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon he had found "a natural desire always to concentrate on the surface eruptions of conflict."

Stressing his hopes for peace in the region, he added: "Peace in Palestine is not only just and right, it is the indispensable precondition for rolling back the momentum of this global terrorist movement which threatens us.

"The peace must be on the right terms. I have shown my support for Israel's right to be secure and I will continue to do so. Peace which threatens its security is no peace. But on the right terms it must be done.

"Yesterday's announcement of a Government of national unity in Palestine is precisely what I hoped for. On the basis it is faithful to the conditions spelled out by the Quartet - the UN, EU, US and Russia - we should lift the economic sanctions on the Palestinian Authority and be prepared to deal with the Government, the whole Government. Then piece by piece, step by step, we must put a process of peace back together again."

Israeli forces remain in the area, having occupied at least five Palestinian homes that they are now using as military bases from which to monitor Palestinian activities on the ground, and fire at will at Palestinians and their homes. Snipers are present on each of the occupied rooftops, and the families whose homes are being occupied by the military have each been forced into one room of their home under gunpoint. Israeli forces frequently occupy Palestinian homes during their invasions of Palestinian areas, and turn them into military bases either temporarily or permanently. The families whose homes are occupied have no legal recourse to take against the Israeli army, as Palestinians have no rights in Israeli courts.