Trump calls for veto on United Nations resolution halting Israeli settlements

The UN Security Council postponed a scheduled vote on the draft resolution calling on Israel to stop building settlements in the West Bank.

Donald Trump is calling on the Obama administration to veto a United Nations resolution regarding Israeli settlements, weighing in on one of the most significant pressure points in USA foreign policy just weeks before President Barack Obama leaves office.

But there’s no word from the Egyptian mission to the United Nations on whether a vote on the settlements resolution will be rescheduled before Obama leaves office. Council member Egypt worked with the Palestinians to draft the text.

Shortly after Trump’s call for an American veto, Egypt, which sponsored the measure, made a decision to postpone a vote on the resolution indefinitely.

The UN resolution also represents Obama’s last chance to weigh in on the sharply deteriorating prospects for peace and indeed the cornerstone of U.S. policy: a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

“I think you’re going to find in the weeks ahead in the confirmation process on David Friedman that it’s going to be very clear that … he and President Trump want to be part of achieving peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and that some of the things he said really don’t reflect what he believes”, Lieberman told CNN.

Robbie Sabel, professor of global law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the resolution would have been “politically damaging” for Israel as it could have weakened its position when negotiating the settlement issue with the Palestinians.

Under Netanyahu’s government, settlement construction has surged with some 15,000 settlers moving into the West Bank over the past year alone.

Trump’s charity foundation has also contributed to the settlement, called Beit El.

An Aug. 2 op-ed that Mr. Friedman wrote for the Israeli news website Arutz Sheva, meanwhile, argued against the “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The United States has vetoed 30 resolutions regarding Israel and the Palestinians, plus a dozen more regarding Israel and Lebanon or Syria.

Palestinians have hoped a measure condemning Israeli settlements would appear before the Security Council soon, as they expect a Trump administration to side with Israel. The most recent talks broke down in 2014. According to Security Council Report, the USA has vetoed 30 resolutions on issues pertaining to the region.

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) agrees, saying instead of taking shots at Israel, the council should focus on bringing Palestinians and Israelis to the negotiating table. It called on Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities” in the occupied West Bank. Another 300,000 live in east Jerusalem, which was also captured from Jordan in the 1967 war, but which Israel annexed in a step that hasn’t been recognized internationally. A move to tacitly criticize Israel’s settlement building on land proposed for Palestinian territory.

The resolution sought to declare that any activity involving Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice agreement lines “has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under global law”.

Rep. Nita Lowey, a Democrat, represents New York’s 17 Congressional district.

Lowey, D-N.Y., the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee and the state and foreign operations subcommittee, said a veto would “uphold longstanding USA policy of defending Israel against one-sided resolutions”.

“He will continue with the tradition of the pro-Israeli veto in the Security Council”, Nawash said. “Only the parties themselves can resolve their complicated differences through direct negotiations”. Doing so would have represented a significant shift in USA policy.