Netanyahu blames US for vote on settlements
Israel’s PM angered by West Bank stance
TEL AVIV: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped up his broadside at the US government after the UN Security Council declared Israel’s settlements illegal, saying President Barack Obama’s administration “initiated and stood behind” the resolution.
Mr Netanyahu said Mr Obama broke a long-standing US commitment not to allow the UN to impose conditions on Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians. Resolution 2334, which passed on Friday by a 14-0 vote — with the US abstaining — demands that Israel cease construction in all areas it captured in the 1967 Middle East war and describes the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied Palestinian territory.
“We will do all we can to make sure Israel won’t be harmed by this shameful resolution,” Mr Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday, calling the bill “unbalanced and extremely hostile to the State of Israel”.
The resolution calls on member states to differentiate between territories inside and outside the pre-1967 lines in their dealings with Israel. While the immediate practical impact is unclear — the resolution is declaratory but not binding on member states — it could strengthen the movement to boycott or sanction Israel and open the door for more lawsuits against Israel in international bodies. The EU already requires goods produced in Israeli settlements to be labelled distinctly from those made in Israel, allowing consumers to avoid them more easily.
The US abstention highlighted the increasingly strained relationship between Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu. The Security Council vote came in the waning weeks of Mr Obama’s presidency, as Israel looks forward to warmer relations with Presidentelect Donald Trump, who had pressured Mr Obama to veto the resolution in an unusual breach of transition protocol.
“The big loss yesterday for Israel in the United Nations will make it much harder to negotiate peace. Too bad, but we will get it done anyway!” Mr Trump told his 17.9 million Twitter followers.
Mr Obama was highly critical of Israel’s West Bank settlements from the moment he entered office, demanding a construction freeze as a condition for peace talks with the Palestinians. The two leaders then clashed publicly over the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, with Mr Netanyahu denouncing it in a speech to Congress that wasn’t coordinated with the White House and that soured relations further.
The Obama administration has denied Friday’s vote breached any US commitments to Israel, saying it’s in keeping with US support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the United Nations, defended the move to abstain, saying that “one cannot champion” both settlements and the two-state solution.
Under terms of the agreements that have directed Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts for more than two decades, borders and settlements are issues for the two sides to negotiate between themselves in a final peace deal. Israel says the UN vote will convince Palestinians they can get what they want without having to negotiate, making them more intransigent.
The resolution “doesn’t bring peace closer. It pushes it further away”, Mr Netanyahu said on Saturday at a ceremony marking the beginning of Hannukah.
Palestinian leaders welcomed the measure’s passage. The office of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement in Arabic that the move is “a big blow for the Israeli political policy, a condemnation of settlements and consensus by the international community and a support for the two-state solution”. Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad also praised the vote.
The domestic fallout of the vote was unclear. Education Minister Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home party, which opposes a Palestinian state, said Israel should annex portions of the West Bank in response.
A controversial initiative to authorise West Bank outposts — postponed until after Mr Trump takes office next month — could be revived following the UN move, the Times of Israel reported. The bill would legalise some 4,000 housing units in the West Bank. The opposition took a different lesson from the vote. Zionist Union head Isaac Herzog criticized the UN vote and called it the most difficult blow Israel had suffered in decades, but also presented it as a repudiation of Mr Netanyahu’s policies.
“If Netanyahu has any shred of responsibility, he should give up the keys and understand that he can know longer manage the affairs of state,” Mr Herzog said in a post on his Facebook page. “The only way to stop this dangerous descent that he’s brought us to is with elections and a united struggle to topple Netanyahu.”
Mr Netanyahu said countries that worked t o pass the resolution would pay a diplomatic and economic price. Israel moved quickly to recall its ambassadors from New Zealand and Senegal, two co-sponsors of the resolution with which Israel has diplomatic ties, ended aid programmes to Senegal, and cancelled a planned visit by Ukraine’s prime minister. Mr Netanyahu also said he would cut off 30 million shekels (about 284 million baht) in funding to UN institutions.
Under the resolution, he said, Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall would be considered “occupied territory”, which he termed “absurd”.
Mr Netanyahu said friends of Israel in the US and the incoming Trump administration would fight anti-Israel efforts at the UN. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said countries that voted for the resolution were summoned on Sunday for reprimands, beginning with the British representative. The US envoy was not summoned because the US didn’t vote in favour of the resolution, Mr Nahshon said.