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| The UN Security Council. In this photo from December 20, 2016, members observe a moment of silence in memory of the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Turkey, who was assassinated on 19 December in a terrorist attack in Ankara. (UN Photo/Manuel Elias) |
Delay comes after Israel scrambled to head off any surprise US move; Netanyahu calls on Washington not to abandon policy of standing up for Israel at UN.
From: Times of Israel
The United Nations Security Council on Thursday postponed a vote on an Egyptian-drafted resolution demanding that Israel immediately halt its settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, diplomats said. The vote had been set to take place later in the day.
Egypt requested the delay to allow time for consultations on the measure, but no new time or date was scheduled. One unnamed Western diplomatic source told Reuters that the vote was postponed “potentially indefinitely.”
Egypt sought the postponement at Israel’s request, after “high level” contacts between the two governments, Reuters said.
The delay came as Israel was scrambling to head off a possible surprise move by the United States, with some indications the Obama administration may not have been willing to exercise its veto power.
According to a report in the Israeli news site Walla, an unnamed Israeli official said that outgoing US Secretary of State John Kerry told a Palestinian delegation to Washington earlier this month that the US would not veto the resolution; however, the Palestinians later denied this claim.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had convened his security cabinet for an emergency session Thursday evening, just hours before the vote was scheduled.
Netanyahu, who earlier in the day called on the US to veto the resolution, issued a statement before his ministerial meeting saying he hoped the Obama administration “won’t abandon” the longstanding policy “of the US to stand up in the UN and veto anti-Israel resolutions,” calling it “one of the great pillars of the US-Israel alliance.”
“I hope the US won’t abandon this policy; I hope it will abide by the principles set by President Obama himself in his speech in the UN in 2011: That peace will come not through UN resolutions, but only through direct negotiations between the parties. And that’s why this proposed resolution is bad. It’s bad for Israel; it’s bad for the United States; and it’s bad for peace,” Netanyahu said.
Kerry had been scheduled to speak Thursday on the stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks ahead of the scheduled vote, but his address was reportedly canceled after news of the vote’s postponement came out.
US President-elect Donald Trump earlier Thursday came to Israel’s defense, calling on the Obama administration to veto the resolution and describing it as “extremely unfair” to Israelis.
“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,” Trump said on his social media accounts Thursday.
The passing of such a resolution, he added, would put “Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis.”
One senior Israeli official charged Thursday that the US would be in breach of its commitment to not back one-sided anti-Israel resolutions if it allowed the resolution to pass.
“We hope America doesn’t breach its longstanding commitment to advance peace through negotiations,” a senior official told The Times of Israel, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If they don’t veto, it will be a last gasp by the Obama administration, as they expect policy to change with the new [Trump] administration. We hope President Obama stays true to his words in 2011 that peace won’t come through statements at the UN.”
The UN draft resolution submitted by Cairo called on Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”
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