The UN has cancelled a vote for today on its anti-Israel resolution that was going to potentially pit Trump and Netanyahu against Obama:
WSJ – A potential collision between the Obama administration and the incoming team of President-elect Donald Trump was avoided when the United Nations Security Council postponed a vote on a resolution criticizing Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank.
After a draft of the resolution was circulated by Egyptian diplomats late Wednesday, Israel urged the U.S. to veto it, but diplomats at the U.N. said the matter wouldn’t be coming to a vote on Thursday.
“This is a resolution that the Egyptians spearheaded and introduced, only to shelve it under Israeli pressure,” a Western diplomat said. “The vote has been postponed potentially indefinitely.”
The wording of the draft resolution closely reflects the views of the Middle East Quartet, which issued a report in August calling settlement construction an obstacle to peace and urging its end. The Quartet is composed of the U.N., the U.S., Russia and the European Union.
The U.S. vetoed a similar resolution against the settlements in 2011, but with Barack Obama in the final weeks of his presidency, Palestinian officials have brought the measure forward again hoping the president will break with precedent and not order a U.S. veto or abstention.
In Mr. Obama’s final year in office, the White House has considered ways to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and in recent months has considered supporting a resolution, according to White House officials.
Mr. Trump on Thursday urged a U.S. veto of the resolution.
“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 in a statement issued in Palm Beach by his transition team. “This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis.”
There was indeed reports this morning that Obama was going to abstain rather than veto the resolution:
Several sources to @NBCNews @mitchellreports: Obama Admin was going to ABSTAIN from UN vote condemning Israel before Egypt delayed the vote pic.twitter.com/ebKlNqODOd
— Ayman Mohyeldin (@AymanM) December 22, 2016
According to the Washington Post, this was what the anti-Israel draft resolution said:
The draft resolution condemns “all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, including . . . the construction and expansion of settlements, transfer of Israeli settlers, confiscation of land, demolition of homes and displacement of Palestinian civilians, in violation of international humanitarian law and relevant resolutions.”
The settlements, it says, have “no legal validity” and are “a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.”
It further demands that Israel “immediately cease all settlement activities” and calls on all states “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.”
So basically, it’s condemning the settlements and furthering this BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) nonsense against Israel.
Here are both Netanyahu and Trump’s tweets and statements on the resolution:
The US should veto the anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council on Thursday.
— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) December 22, 2016