The U.S. is trying to push the Palestinians, who are behind the move, to take it off the table.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is preparing a resolution condemning Israel for legalizing nine settlements in Judea and Samaria this week and advancing plans to build some 10,000 new homes in the region, Reuters reported Wednesday.
The draft, written by the United Arab Emirates, one of Israel’s Arab “peace partners,” in conjunction with the Palestinian Authority (PA), calls for Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
Harking back to the December 2016 resolution that called all Jewish building in Judea and Samaria illegal, it also “reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.”
Resolution 2334 infamously passed when then-president Barak Obama did not order it to be blocked after he had already lost the elections to Donald Trump and Trump had requested that an American veto be issued.
Based on the legal decisions of the 1920 San Remo conference, which were adopted by the UN when it was formed 25 years later, Israel alone has a right to the region, and the “occupation” terminology consistently used by the Palestinians and their supporters is untrue.
According to an Axios report based on unnamed Israeli and American officials, the U.S. is making efforts to get the resolution, planned for a Monday vote, off the table. The administration has offered the Palestinians that it would instead back a unanimous statement condemning Israel made by the president of the Security Council, which is held by Malta this month.
This is despite the Biden administration’s firm stance against settlement expansion, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken made clear on Monday, when he slammed the decision to authorize the 10 young settlements, most of which have existed for at least 20 years.
Noting that the administration was “deeply troubled” over the Israeli cabinet’s decision, he said, “We strongly oppose such unilateral measures, which exacerbate tensions and undermine the prospects for a negotiated two-state solution.”
The Palestinians have so far rebuffed the American proposal, said the report, and Israeli officials, who are sure that the resolution will pass, are asking for the U.S. to use its veto power as it has done many times in the past to protect the Jewish state in the international body.
With the resolution’s draft circulating among the 15 UNSC member states, Israel has made its own request of them. UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan sent a letter Tuesday asking for “the international community to condemn the latest terror attacks against Israeli civilians in the strongest and unequivocal terms.”
Ten Jewish civilians, three of them children, have been murdered in Jerusalem by terrorists in separate shooting and ramming attacks in the last three weeks.
Erdan reminded the members that “those abhorrent crimes are being encouraged and applauded by the Palestinian Authority,” both through “official statements, parades and celebrations,” and the monetary support it provides “to terrorists and their families.”