 |
| Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and President Barack Obama embrace at a ceremony welcoming the US leader at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, on March 20, 2013 (Miriam Alster/Flash90) |
From: Times of Israel
By David Horovitz
The Obama administration has had eight years to convey its concerns about Israel’s settlement expansion, eight years to use its phenomenal leverage with its key Middle East ally to pressure Jerusalem to change course.
If — and as of this writing, we are still in “if” territory — the administration was, perhaps still is, ready to forgo its UN veto and let a Palestinian-designed resolution gain passage in the UN Security Council, condemning all settlements and potentially inviting new international diplomatic and financial pressure against Israel, it will instead have chosen a course of action that could sabotage its admirable two-term history of defending Israel’s against those international players that wish it ill. It will have essentially sided against Israel with those negative forces.
It will have reversed and made a mockery of its own previous pledges and positions — notably when it vetoed a similar resolution five years ago with the explanation that the Security Council was not the right venue for tackling issues that need to be resolved by the parties themselves. (Susan Rice, the US envoy to the UN at the time, noted that the veto “should not be misunderstood to mean we support settlement activity, but added: “Unfortunately, this draft resolution risks hardening the positions of both sides and could encourage the parties to stay out of negotiations.”)
And it will have acted without nuance on the settlement issue, undermining its own goals when it comes to this vexed and complex issue, as it unfortunately often has.
For eight years, the Obama administration frequently condemned all building beyond the pre-1967 lines as a crime of equal gravity, rarely choosing to distinguish between new homes built deep in West Bank territory, where the Palestinians seek statehood, and those in Jerusalem or close to the pre-1967 lines, where even the Palestinians realize they will not be gaining control. Those blanket condemnations alienated much of mainstream Israel — which opposes settling in areas that complicate any eventual separation from the Palestinians, but largely supports building inside Jerusalem and the so-called settlement blocs — and thus worked against the Obama administration’s own goal of bolstering Israeli backing for an eventual accommodation.
In its final months and weeks, the administration had been dropping hints that it might not block anti-settlement moves at the UN, notably when Secretary of State John Kerry, publicly castigating the settlement enterprise with unprecedented vigor during an appearance at the Saban Forum earlier this month, promised only to veto what he termed “a biased, unfair resolution calculated to delegitimize Israel.”
Did the administration persuade itself that the Egyptian text submitted late Wednesday constituted an unbiased and fair resolution that it could reasonably allow to win passage? If so, and again we remain in the corridors of uncertainty for now, then Israel plainly disagrees. The Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, termed the text “disgraceful.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pleaded publicly with the US to veto it.
0 comments:
Publicar un comentario