Despite its veto, unified vote at UN brings to focus isolation of US on Jerusalem issue
America’s increasing international isolation, the UN Security Council has demanded that the Trump administration rescind its decisions to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to put the US embassy there.
The demand, in a resolution on Monday that its backers knew would likely offend the United States, was vetoed by the US ambassador Nikki R Haley. She was alone.
Even America’s staunchest allies on the 15-member council, the most powerful body in the UN system, voted for the resolution.
They warned that President Donald Trump’s December 6 announcement about Jerusalem, which upended decades of US policy, threatened to subvert the effort to solve one of the world’s most intractable conflicts.
Ignoring the ostracism, Haley chastised fellow council members after the midday vote, calling it “an embarrassment” and arguing that Trump’s decision two weeks ago was a “US recognition of the obvious.”
Any suggestion that the Trump administration’s decision had harmed the peace process was “a scandalous charge,” she said, noting that it was the first time in six years that the US had used its veto power in the council.
“Today, for the simple act of deciding where to put our embassy, the United States was forced to defend its sovereignty,” she said. “The record will reflect that we did so proudly.”
The one-page resolution, drafted by Egypt, reiterated the long-standing position of the Security Council, in several resolutions dating back 50 years, rejecting Israel’s sovereignty claim over Jerusalem, the holy city revered by Christians, Jews and Muslims.
Without identifying the U.S. by name, the resolution also reiterated the council’s view that no country should establish an embassy in Jerusalem, and that the city’s status was an issue to be resolved by Israel and the Palestinians, who want eastern Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state.
In his speech this month announcing plans to move the embassy from Tel Aviv, Trump called the decision, which had been a key campaign promise, “the right thing to do.” Critics said that in seeking to reward his political base at home, the president potentially sacrificed stability in the Middle East.
Since the announcement, violence in the region has escalated. There have been at least 27 rocket attacks from Gaza and clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinian demonstrators, along with calls by some for a new Palestinian uprising, Nickolay E. Mladenov, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, told the Security Council. Israel seized eastern Jerusalem in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and has declared the entire city to be its eternal capital.