US abstention allows UN to demand end to Israeli settlements
Donald Trump and Israel had urged Washington to use its veto to stop historic security council resolution
The United Nations security council has adopted a historic resolution demanding a halt to all Israeli settlement in the occupied territories after Barack Obama’s administration of refused to veto the resolution and instead chose to to abstain.
The resolution passed by a 14-0 vote on Friday night. Loud applause was heard in the packed security chamber when the US ambassador, Samantha Power, abstained.
The resolution says Israel’s settlements on Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, have “no legal validity” and demands a halt to “all Israeli settlement activities,” saying this “is essential for salvaging the two-state solution”. The resolution reiterated that Israeli settlement was a “flagrant violation” of international law.
The vote was scheduled at the request of four countries - New Zealand, Malaysia, Senegal and Venezuela - who stepped in to push for action after Egypt put the draft resolution on hold on Thursday.
The decision by the US overturned a years-long policy of US of vetoing resolutions critical of Israel, underlining the tension between Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who had made furious efforts to prevent a US abstention.
A resolution requires nine votes in favour and no vetoes by the United States, France, Russia, Britain or China to be adopted.
Explaining the US decision to abstain, Power said the Israeli settlement “seriously undermines Israel’s security”, adding : “The United States has been sending a message that the settlements must stop privately and publicly for nearly five decades.”
Power said the US did not veto the resolution because the Obama administration believed it reflected the state of affairs regarding settlement and remained consistent with US policy.
“One cannot simultaneously champion expanding Israeli settlements and champion a viable two-state solution that would end the conflict. One had to make a choice between settlements and separation,” Power said.
The US decision was immediately hailed as a victory by Palestinian officials, but Israel’s energy minister, Yuval Steinitz, seen as a mouthpiece for Netanyahu said the United States had abandoned Israel.
“This is not a resolution against settlements, it is an anti-Israel resolution, against the Jewish people and the state of the Jews. The United States tonight has simply abandoned its only friend in the Middle East,” Steinitz told Channel Two News.
The vote will be seen as a major defeat for Netanyahu, who has long had a difficult relationship with the Obama administration.
Netanyahu had tried to prevent the vote by appealing to the president-elect, Donald Trump, who will not be sworn in until late January, and to the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatal al-Sisi.
While the resolution is largely symbolic in some senses, it will be seen as empowering an increasingly tough EU over Israel and will give pause to international companies who have interests in the occupied territories.
Originally drafted by Egypt, the original version of the resolution had been supposed to go to a vote on Thursday night, but was withdrawn by Sisi under pressure orchestrated by Israel.
Following the vote Trump, tweeted: “As to the UN, things will be different after Jan 20.”
Pro-Israel senators and lobby groups also weighed in following the vote. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), one of the most influential pro-US lobby groups, said it was “deeply disturbed by the failure of the Obama administration to exercise its veto to prevent a destructive, one-sided, anti-Israel resolution from being enacted by the United Nations security council”.
It also pointedly thanked Trump for his attempts to intervene: “AIPAC expresses its appreciation to president-elect Trump and the many Democratic and Republican members of congress who urged a veto of this resolution.”
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My comments :
1. Be under no illusion, that (in spite of this relative victory in the UNSC in the ME dossier) after the inauguration of Trump, there will not be the (already solemnly promised and carefully composed) colonial / imperial USA Likud shadow-government, that - conform the absolute power of the main donors of Trump and their allies in the Trump-camp (ie. the axle Mercer-Adelson-Kushner) over the Trump ME policy - will act exactly the way, the extreme-right militant Netanyahu government will dictate to the Trump Administration.
2. If Obama had been genuinely serious about some kind of sustainable peace in the ME, he at least had tried for once the (fully legitimate) diplomatic use of the golden leverage of the existential annual aid sum (plus all the hidden USA subsidies to the western colony in the ME, called Israel), in order to force the Israeli government, to act accordingly to international law.
3. There is no doubt that - from the conception of the zionist project in the ME, in the late 19th century onwards - the main aim of zionism is to found an exclusive Jewish state on the Palestinian territory.
4. Although the founder of the Likud movement - the notorious fascist and racist Eastern-European Jabotinsky - may have let the world believe, that he "only" wanted the indigenous people of Palestine separate (the Iron wall doctrine) and humiliate (the Iron Fist doctrine) until they would unconditionally accept the presence of "the jewish People" in their midst, his successors have expressed, that Israel no doubt, will "have to be" cleansed of the autochtonous Palestinians, and that the borders of Eretz-Israel will stretch from the banks of the Euphrates untill the banks of the river Nile, and the Northern border will include a peace of Lebanon and Syria (apart from trans-Jordan, that should also be included, according to the imperial Great-Israel "visionairs").
3. There is no doubt that - from the conception of the zionist project in the ME, in the late 19th century onwards - the main aim of zionism is to found an exclusive Jewish state on the Palestinian territory.
4. Although the founder of the Likud movement - the notorious fascist and racist Eastern-European Jabotinsky - may have let the world believe, that he "only" wanted the indigenous people of Palestine separate (the Iron wall doctrine) and humiliate (the Iron Fist doctrine) until they would unconditionally accept the presence of "the jewish People" in their midst, his successors have expressed, that Israel no doubt, will "have to be" cleansed of the autochtonous Palestinians, and that the borders of Eretz-Israel will stretch from the banks of the Euphrates untill the banks of the river Nile, and the Northern border will include a peace of Lebanon and Syria (apart from trans-Jordan, that should also be included, according to the imperial Great-Israel "visionairs").
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