The U.S. has informed Arab governments that it will support a U.N. Security Council statement reaffirming that the 15-nation body “does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity,” a move aimed at avoiding the prospect of having to veto a stronger Palestinian resolution calling the settlements illegal.
The move by the Obama administration appears calculated to avoid having to cast its first ever veto in the U.N. Security council by joining others in the council in sending a strong message to Israel to stop its continued construction of new building of settlements.
Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, outlined the new U.S. offer in a closed door meeting on Tuesday with the Arab Group, a bloc of Arab countries from North Africa and the Middle East. In exchange for scuttling the Palestinian resolution, the United States would support the council statement, consider supporting a U.N. Security Council visit to the Middle East, the first since 1979, and commit to supporting strong language criticizing Israel’s settlement policies in a future statement by the Middle East Quartet.
While the United States has opposed new settlements in the past, actually working out a deal with this Arab Group to bring some kind of UN legitimacy to its anti-semitism is beyond the pale. They have now legitimized this Israeli hatred inside the United Nations and proven once and for all (as if Israel didn’t need anymore proof) that the US under Obama is now fully behind the anti-Israel faction in the Middle East.
And guess what….the Arab Group declined the offer.
Only in a Obama/Carter world would we even offer a compromise like this, and now, on top of the fact that we will be pissing off the Arab world with a veto (which we knew would happen), we have now further alienated Israel.
That Niall Ferguson interview is even more meaningful now
So is this from a fellow Democrat:
This is too clever by half. Instead of doing the correct and principled thing and vetoing an inappropriate and wrong resolution, they now have opened the door to more and more anti-Israeli efforts coming to the floor of the U.N. The correct venue for discussions about settlements and the other aspects of a peace plan is at the negotiating table. Period.
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