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Trump joins Netanyahu in urging US veto of UN bid to halt settlements UN abruptly postpones vote to halt Israeli settlements 'indefinitely'
(35 minutes later)
Donald Trump has echoed the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in urging the Obama administration to veto a UN security council draft resolution that calls for an immediate halt to settlement building on occupied land Palestinians seek for a state. The UN security council has postponed a contentious vote on a resolution that would have demanded Israel halt all settlement activities as a “flagrant violation” of international law.
Netanyahu took to Twitter in the dead of night in Israel to make the appeal in a sign of concern that Barack Obama might take a parting shot at a policy which he has long opposed and at a an Israeli leader with whom he has had a rocky relationship. The plan to call a vote – announced abruptly on Wednesday evening by Egypt which had been drafting the resolution – was postponed indefinitely a few hours ahead of the planned security council meeting on Thursday afternoon.
Hours later, Trump, posting on Twitter and Facebook, backed his fellow conservative Netanyahu on one of the most contentious issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Several diplomats and western officials said the Egyptians had been pressured to postpone the vote by the Israelis.
“The resolution being considered at the United Nations security council regarding Israel should be vetoed,” Trump said. Egypt, the first Arab country to make peace with Israel, was said to be meeting with Arab League diplomats to review the text.
“As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations between the parties, and not through the imposition of terms by the United Nations. Diplomats added that there was no time frame for when the vote may now take place with some suggesting it could be put off “indefinitely”.
“This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis,” he wrote. The issue of a planned resolution, which has been in the drafting process for several weeks along with a second draft resolution sponsored by New Zealand, had drawn considerable attention amid speculation over whether President Obama might change US policy and not deploy its veto.
After Trump’s statement, a US administration official said: “We have no comment at this time.” That speculation had been fuelled in turn by US administration frustration over recent political moves by the rightwing coalition of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, not least over proposed and highly controversial legislation that would retroactively legalise some 100 outposts built on private Palestinian land.
Egypt circulated the draft on Wednesday evening and the 15-member council was due to vote in New York on Thursday afternoon, diplomats said. They added that it was unclear how the US, which in the past has protected Israel from UN action, would vote. The announcement of the vote, however, had prompted immediate calls from Netanyahu for the US to use its veto power at the security council to block the resolution in a late-night tweet .
The resolution would demand Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem”. On Thursday Netanyahu returned to the fray publicly urging the US to veto the resolution, calling it bad for peace. “Peace will come not through UN resolutions, but only through direct negotiations between the parties,” he said.
The White House declined to comment. Some diplomats hope Obama will allow security council action by abstaining on the vote. The move also prompted the intervention of US president-elect Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, who said in a statement that Washington should use its veto to block the resolution.
Israeli officials voiced concern that passage of the resolution would embolden the Palestinians to seek international sanctions against Israel. “The resolution being considered at the United Nations security council regarding Israel should be vetoed,” the Republican said in a statement. “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 said.
“This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis,” Trump added.
Obama’s administration has been highly critical of settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem. US officials said this month, however, that the president was not expected to make major moves on Israeli-Palestinian peace before leaving office. Israeli settlements have long been seen as major stumbling block to peace efforts as they are built on land the Palestinians see as part of their future state.
The US says continued Israeli settlement building lacks legitimacy but has stopped short of adopting the position of many other countries that it is illegal under international law. Some 570,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. The UN maintains that settlements are illegal, but UN officials have reported a surge in construction over the past months.
Some in the Israeli government view Trump’s victory as an opportunity to expand settlements in the West Bank, Palestinian land occupied by Israel for nearly 50 years.
The Egyptian draft has also emerged amid a period of profound uncertainty over the moribund Israel-Palestine peace process largely fuelled by fears over what Trump’s Middle East policy might be.
Last week Trump nominated as his ambassador to Israel the hardliner David Friedman, a man who has said Washington will not pressure Israel to curtail settlement building in the occupied West Bank.
Another key influence on Trump is said to be his son-in-law Jared Kushner whose family charity has donated money to one of the occupied West Bank’s most hardline settlements.
The draft resolution – in its latest form - demands that: “Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem” adding settlements have “no legal validity” and are “dangerously imperilling the viability of the two-state solution” that would see an independent state of Palestine co-exist alongside Israel.