WASHINGTON – As major American Jewish organizations and political figures, including Senator Clinton, declared victory following a vote in Geneva that moved Israel one step closer to joining the International Federation of Red Cross Societies after nearly 60 years of exclusion, some observers expressed caution and dismay, denouncing the vote as implementing an unfair double-standard for the Red Star of David.

Since 1949, Israel’s official relief organization, the Magen David Adom, or Red Star of David, has been kept out of the international Red Cross, largely owing to opposition from Arab states, which have argued, among other objections, that the MDA’s emblem – a red six-pointed star – is not a protected relief-workers’ symbol under the Geneva Conventions.

Despite reports that hailed yesterday’s vote as an official inclusion of Israel in the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the decision only added to the Geneva Conventions a new, “neutral” symbol that the MDA must use to carry out its relief operations abroad if it desires protection under international law. The 181-member federation must still decide whether it will accept the new symbol, and will then vote on whether to make the MDA a member society. The director of the international department of Magen David Adom, Yonatan Yagodovsky, told The New York Sun he expects Israel will become a full, voting member in March or April next year.

The new symbol is a hollow red parallelogram, called a “red crystal” by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The MDA says it will continue to use the red star for relief operations within Israel, and may place the red star within the new “neutral” crystal for its missions abroad. A stand-alone red Star of David remains unprotected under international law.

The adoption of the new crystal eliminated the largest roadblock to Israel’s inclusion as a full voting member in the international Federation and was intensely opposed by Syria, which, according to the Associated Press, had refused to approve of the crystal unless Syrian relief organizations were permitted to enter the Golan Heights. Swiss officials had said they wanted the adoption of the new red crystal to be by a consensus of Geneva Conventions signatories, but the opposition from Syria and other states forced a yes-no vote.

Of the 191 signatories, 98 voted for the new symbol, 27 voted against, 10 abstained, and the rest were not present for the vote.

Switzerland is the “depository” for the Geneva Conventions and maintains the official vote tally. A spokesman for the Swiss Foreign Ministry, Lars Knuchel, told the Sun yesterday that the official vote results were not yet public but added that the 27 votes against the new symbol came from “most of the Arab countries,” and added that “Cuba and North Korea voted against. There were also abstentions in the Islamic and Arabic field as well.”

According to officials of the American government who asked not to be identified, most of the states in opposition to the new symbol belonged to the 59-member Organization of the Islamic Conference, including Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Algeria, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Yemen. Jordan, according to the officials, abstained from the vote, and Turkey, a member of the OIC, voted in favor of the new symbol.

The approval of the new symbol met with celebratory statements from many American Jewish organizations. Senator Clinton, who has been an advocate for the MDA’s inclusion, said she was “thrilled” by the vote. Mr. Yagodovsky told the Sun: “This is a decision that we were waiting for a very long time.”

The president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein, however, said the decision was “insulting.”

Mr. Klein noted that the red cross and the red crescent are permitted as stand-alone protected symbols, and said it amounted to an unfair double standard that the star of David had to be contained by the new red crystal.

If Israel approved of the new arrangement “on condition that the Magen David will not be recognized as a symbol on par with the red cross and red crescent, then Israel has made a serious mistake and brought shame on the Jewish people,” Mr. Klein said. “It only implants in the minds of many the slow de-Judaization of the state of Israel.”

A spokesman for the ICRC, Ian Philips, stressed yesterday that the red cross and red crescent were not religious symbols, saying they were historical symbols, merely inversions of the Swiss and Ottoman flags.

When asked whether the red star of David should be a stand-alone symbol because it is merely an inversion of the Israeli flag, Mr. Philips cited the longstanding opposition to the red star and said that, as a result, the Israelis were not asking for the red star to be considered a standalone symbol.