Obama pressed to act on Israeli settlements
He has to decide on US approach to draft UN resolutions
WASHINGTON // US president Barack Obama, whose administration has failed to break the impasse between Israel and the Palestinians during eight years in office, is coming under pressure to act one last time as events in Israel and at the United Nations clash.
The Israeli parliament is debating legislation that would give official recognition to Israel’s expanding settlements in the disputed West Bank that were built without government approval.
That, in turn, is bolstering efforts by United Nations Security Council members who are circulating competing versions of a draft resolution that would condemn those settlements, or at least express the world body’s concern about them. Mr Obama may have to decide whether the United States should exercise its UN veto against a resolution criticising all settlements, as it has in the past, or abstain and let the resolution go through despite the probability that president-elect Donald Trump would denounce and disavow the move.
An abstention “wouldn’t shock me”, said Dennis Ross, Mr Oba- ma’s former Middle East policy coordinator, even though the administration has been signaling for some time that Mr Obama would not be inclined to re-engage in the Israel-Palestinian question.
The US would veto any formulation supporting Palestinian statehood, Mr Ross said, but “a narrow resolution on settlements? That’s less far-fetched”.
A US official declined to speculate on hypothetical UN resolutions but said the administration remained concerned about the lack of progress towards a two-state solution and the need to reverse trends, including violence and settlement activity.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian Authority’s ambassador to the UN, yesterday said that the Obama administration was getting cold feet after showing initial willingness to consider a resolution on settlements.
“The Americans were saying wait till after the elections before pushing for this resolution,” said Mr Mansour, adding that he was scheduled to have a meeting with Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, on the issue on Tuesday. “Now they are saying president Obama is looking at all options.”
Competing drafts of UN resolutions are being circulated among the 15 Security Council members by the Palestinians and by New Zealand.
Both resolutions call for a return to negotiations to keep the two-state solution between Israel and Palestine alive and both express concern about Israel’s settlements.
The Palestinian draft condemns “all settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” as illegal and an obstacle to peace. The New Zealand version is much milder in its criticism and also urges the Palestinian authorities to stop inciting vio- lence, according to diplomats who had seen the drafts. Mr Obama would have to weigh acceptance of a UN resolution criticising Israeli settlements against the prospect of a strong reaction by Mr Trump, who could disavow the move and support Israel’s right to build settlements. Mr Trump has promised a closer relationship with Israel, after years of prickly relations between Mr Obama and Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu. “We do not know what Trump will do, but I think one of the takeaways of eight years of the Obama administration is that America’s non- differentiated approach” towards disapproving of settlements generally had not worked, said David Makovsky, a former member of the US negotiating team with Israel and the Palestinians.