Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Egypt delays vote on Israeli settlements
UN resolution would condemn West Bank sites.
JERUSALEM — Under heavy Israeli pressure, Egypt on Thursday indefinitely postponed a planned U.N. vote on a proposed Security Council resolution that sought to condemn Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, diplomats and Western officials said, just a few hours before the vote was set to take place.
The vote would have been one of the last opportunities for President Barack Obama to take a stand against Israeli settlement building after years of failed peace efforts, but doing so could re-ignite a dispute with a close ally in the waning days of his tenure.
The delay also dealt a setback to repeated Palestinian efforts to censure Israel over its settlements.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had publicly urged the U.S. to veto the resolution, calling it bad for peace.
“Peace will come not through U.N. resolutions, but only through direct negotiations between the parties,” he said.
President-elect Donald Trump had also urged Obama to block the measure, issuing a statement nearly identical to Netanyahu’s. “As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations between the parties, and not through the imposition of terms by the United Nations,” he posted on Facebook. “This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis.”
The U.S., as a permanent member of the Security Council, has traditionally used its veto power to block resolutions condemning Israeli settlements, even though it sees them as an obstacle to a peace settlement. But in recent weeks, the Obama administration had been especially secretive about its deliberations, which included what one official described as an unannounced meeting between Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry earlier this month.
The U.S. had been considering a highly unusual abstention, potentially rocking U.S.-Israeli relations, officials said, though they wouldn’t say whether Obama had made a final decision.
Egypt, the Arab representative to the Security Council, circulated the draft Wednesday.
Several diplomats and Western officials said the Egyptians postponed the vote due to pressure from the Israelis. Egypt, the first Arab country to make peace with Israel, was meeting with Arab League diplomats to review the text. Diplomats said there was no time frame for when the vote may now occur and said it could be put off indefinitely.
The diplomats and officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.
An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter, said Israeli diplomats had made the government’s views clear “in various channels.”
The office of the U.N. spokesman later announced Thursday that the Security Council meeting has been postponed.
The draft resolution, circulated by Egypt, demands that Israel stop settlement activities in the Palestinian territories and declares that all existing settlements “have no legal validity” and are “a flagrant violation” of international law.
Ahmed Abu-Zeid, spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, told the SkyNewsArabia channel that “talks are still ongoing” on the draft resolution.
He said the talks are taking place in New York and in Cairo at the Arab League headquarters and that an “appropriate” decision will be taken, without elaboration. He didn’t respond to phone calls.
There was no immediate comment from the Palestinians.
A Security Council resolution would be more than symbolic since it carries the weight of international law.
Nearly 600,000 Jewish settlers now live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, areas the Palestinians want as part of their future state, along with the Gaza Strip.