UNITED NATIONS: The Palestinians have circulated a draft UN resolution demanding that Israel end its “unlawful presence” in Gaza and the West Bank within six months.
The proposed General Assembly resolution, which was obtained by The Associated Press, follows a ruling by the top United Nations court in July that said Israel’s presence in the Palestinian territories is unlawful and must end.
In the sweeping condemnation of Israel’s rule over the lands it captured 57 years ago, the International Court of Justice said Israel had no right to sovereignty over the territories and was violating international laws against acquiring the lands by force. It also said Israeli settlement building must stop.
Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon denounced the resolution and described it as a “reward for terrorism.” He called for the resolution to be rejected.
“Let it be clear: Nothing will stop Israel or deter it from its mission to bring home the hostages and eliminate Hamas,” he said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told The Associated Press on Monday that International Court of Justice rulings “should be accepted and should be implemented.” As for the General Assembly resolution, he said, it’s up to the 193 UN member nations to make a decision.
The draft UN resolution comes as Israel’s military assault on Gaza enters the 11th month after being triggered by the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7 and as violence in the West Bank reaches new highs.
The proposal, if adopted by the 193-member General Assembly, would not be legally binding but the extent of its support would reflect world opinion. There are no vetoes in the assembly, unlike in the 15-member Security Council.
A council diplomat said the Palestinians are aiming for a vote before world leaders of the General Assembly start their annual high-level meetings on Sept. 22. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because discussions on the draft resolution have been private.
The proposal demands that Israel comply with international law, including by immediately withdrawing all military forces from the Palestinian territories.
The draft resolution not only demands an end to all new settlement activity but the evacuation of all settlers and the dismantling of the separation barrier Israel constructed in the West Bank.
And it calls for all Palestinians displaced during Israel’s occupation to be allowed “to return to their original place of residence” and that Israel make reparations “for the damage caused” to all people in the territories.
Israel considers the West Bank to be disputed, the future of which should be decided in negotiations, while it has moved people there in settlements to solidify its hold. It has annexed east Jerusalem in a move that isn’t internationally recognized. It withdrew from Gaza in 2005 but maintained a blockade of the territory after Hamas took power in 2007.
Since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, Gaza’s Health Ministry says over 40,900 Palestinians have been killed there. It does not differentiate between fighters and civilians in its count. The war has caused vast destruction and displaced around 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, often multiple times.
Meanwhile, settler violence in West Bank has reached new highs, and Israeli military raids on West Bank cities and towns have grown more devastating, killing 692 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis within the territory also have increased.
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek all three areas for an independent state. The international community generally considers all three areas to be occupied territory.
Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour told the Security Council last month that he planned to introduce a General Assembly resolution in September to enshrine the ICJ ruling. “We are sick and tired of waiting,” he said. “The time for waiting is over.”
The proposed resolution includes other demands, including for Israel to be held accountable for any violations of international law, sanctions against those responsible for maintaining Israel’s presence in the territories, and for countries to halt arms exports to Israel if they’re suspected of being used in the territories.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Edward B. Johnson, who as a Central Intelligence Agency officer traveled into Iran with a colleague to rescue six American diplomats who fled the 1979 US Embassy takeover in Tehran, has died, the CIA confirmed on Monday. He was 81.
Johnson’s identity for decades had been hidden from the public, with him known only by the pseudonym “Julio” after fellow CIA officer Antonio “Tony” Mendez published a book recounting the operation. The 2012 Academy Award-winning film “Argo,” directed by and starring Ben Affleck, didn’t include the second man on the team.
Yet a painting at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, offered a faceless acknowledgment of Johnson’s existence. And in 2023, the CIA itself revealed Johnson’s identity in a podcast highlighting the agency’s work to free the diplomats hiding at the Canadian ambassador’s residence in Tehran.
“Working with the six — these are rookies,” Johnson recounted in an interview aired by the podcast. “They were people who were not trained to lie to authorities. They weren’t trained to be clandestine, elusive.”
Johnson died Aug. 27 in his sleep in Virginia after suffering from pneumonia, the CIA told The Associated Press on Monday.
“Ed’s legacy will continue to inspire those who walk the halls of Langley for generations to come,” the agency said in a public statement.
His family in a statement honored him as having “a name that whispered through the corridors of intelligence” through his work.
“He was, at once, the ordinary man next door — husband, father, grandfather, brother, uncle and friend — and an extraordinary agent of the state,” they said.
Many specifics about Johnson’s professional life as a spy remain vague, as much of what is known about him publicly comes from the CIA podcast first identifying him, called “The Langley Files.” Johnson, who went by Ed, described coming to the CIA after serving as an infantryman in the US Army. He studied French in university, picked up Spanish from growing up with Cuban and Puerto Rican friends and later learned Arabic after teaching English in Saudi Arabia.
He traveled through Egypt and Jordan and studied at the Sorbonne university before being hired by the CIA. He met his wife, Aileen, while in Paris, his family said.
“It was after after having gotten the on-the-ground experience in the Middle East and the educational experience and the language into play ... that I was considered to be a good candidate,” Johnson said.
Johnson served in the CIA’s Office of Technical Service overseas at the time of the hostage crisis. It began when Islamist students came over the fence at the sprawling US Embassy compound in downtown Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979. While initially planned to be a sit-in like a previous storming, it soon became a 444-day hostage crisis.
Six US Embassy employees, however, had slipped away amid the chaos. They ended up in the home of Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor. Several plans came and went before US President Jimmy Carter agreed to what became known as the “Canadian Caper” — posing the officials as part of a Canadian film crew scouting locations for a fake, knock-off “Star Wars” film called “Argo.”
Armed with Canadian passports, Mendez pretended to be a Canadian while Johnson was “an associate producer representing our production company’s ostensible South American backers,” Mendez later recounted in an internal CIA document. He described Johnson as having “considerable exfiltration experience” during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, without elaborating.
Landing in Tehran on Jan. 25, 1980, the men end up using a local map to try and find the Canadian Embassy. They ended up at the Swedish Embassy — just across the street from the American Embassy, patrolled by armed students. A local embassy guard didn’t understand them, as neither man spoke Iran’s Farsi language — a conscious decision made the CIA not to raise suspicions as their Farsi-language experts might be recognized.
Then one of the student revolutionaries walked over. As a conversation progressed, the men realized the student spoke German after studying abroad for a year. Johnson ended up getting written directions from the student, who even hailed a taxi for them and refused a tip.
“I have to thank the Iranians for being the beacon who got us to the right place,” Johnson said.
The men ended up with the six Americans, providing them scripts, props, fake histories and training on how to pretend to be a film crew. Johnson and Mendez worked on final preparations on the passports and exit slips, the scene represented in the painting at CIA headquarters.
“The biggest thing I think we did was to was to convince them that you can, you can do it — as simple as that,” Johnson remembered.
On Jan. 28, 1980, the CIA officers and the six Americans flew safely out of Tehran on a Swissair flight. Both Johnson and Mendez received the CIA’s Intelligence Star, its second-highest award for valor, for the operation. He retired from the CIA in 1995 and worked as a contractor while exploring a passion in photography, his family said.
“Even as the world celebrated his heroism, he remained a ghost, a figure shrouded in anonymity,” his family said. “For decades, his identity was a closely guarded secret. It was only in the twilight of his life that he finally emerged from the shadows, a legend in his own right.”
Johnson was born July 29, 1943, in Brooklyn. He is survived by his wife, five children, nine grandchildren, other family and friends, his loved ones said.
In the decades since the “Argo” rescue, there’s been a broader reckoning over the CIA’s actions in Iran, particularly the 1953 CIA-led coup that overthrew the country’s prime minister to cement the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. That action lit the fuse for the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the more than four decades of enmity between Tehran and Washington that followed.
The two-part podcast revealing Johnson’s identity acknowledged that, with a CIA historian calling the 1953 coup “one of the exceptions” to the agency’s efforts to bolster democracy worldwide.