One President at a Time (Again)

I honestly don’t know what to make of President Obama’s decision for the United States not to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the settlements Israel has been building on the West Bank. The Chicago Tribune reports:

In a striking rupture with past practice, the United States allowed the U.N. Security Council on Friday to condemn Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem as a “flagrant violation” of international law. In doing so, the outgoing Obama administration brushed aside Donald Trump’s demands that the U.S. exercise its veto and provided a climax to years of icy relations with Israel’s leadership.

The decision to abstain from the council’s 14-0 vote is one of the biggest American rebukes of its longstanding ally in recent memory. And it could have significant ramifications for the Jewish state, potentially hindering Israel’s negotiating position in future peace talks. Given the world’s widespread opposition to settlements, the action will be almost impossible for anyone, including Trump, to reverse.

There’s certainly a lot of angst over it.

Washington Post

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S decision to abstain on a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements reverses decades of practice by both Democratic and Republican presidents. The United States vetoed past resolutions on the grounds that they unreasonably singled out Jewish communities in occupied territories as an obstacle to Middle East peace, and that U.N. action was more likely to impede than advance negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

The measure, approved 14 to 0 by the Security Council Friday, is subject to the same criticism: It will encourage Palestinians to pursue more international sanctions against Israel rather than seriously consider the concessions necessary for statehood, and it will give a boost to the international boycott and divestment movement against the Jewish state, which has become a rallying cause for anti-Zionists. At the same time, it will almost certainly not stop Israeli construction in the West Bank, much less in East Jerusalem, where Jewish housing was also deemed by the resolution to be “a flagrant violation under international law.”

Wall Street Journal

The decision by the United States to abstain from a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel over its settlements on the West Bank is one of the most significant, defining moments of the Obama Presidency.

It defines this President’s extraordinary ability to transform matters of public policy into personal pique at adversaries. And it defines the reality of the international left’s implacable opposition to the Israeli state.

New York Times

A range of senators and congressmen from both parties also denounced the resolution, a reflection of the deep loyalty to Israel shared by Democrats and Republicans. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York said, “It is extremely frustrating, disappointing and confounding that the administration has failed to veto this resolution.”

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who oversees a subcommittee that oversees United Nations funding by the United States, threatened to take steps that could “suspend or significantly reduce” that financing.

Reaction to the resolution also illustrated fissures among American Jews regarding Israeli policy. Some, like the World Jewish Congress and American Jewish Committee, called the resolution a one-sided measure that would not help the peace process. Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, said in a statement: “It is also disconcerting and unfortunate that the United States, Israel’s greatest ally, chose to abstain rather than veto this counterproductive text.”

Other groups that have grown increasingly critical of the Israeli government’s approach to the peace process applauded the resolution and the Obama administration’s decision not to block it.

J Street, a Washington-based organization that advocates a two-state solution, said the resolution “conveys the overwhelming support of the international community, including Israel’s closest friends and allies, for the two-state solution, and their deep concern over the deteriorating status quo between Israelis and Palestinians and the lack of meaningful progress toward peace.”

Talking Points Memo

Since 1972, the United States has vetoed 40 United Nations Security Council resolutions critical of Israel. Most recently, in February 2011, the Obama administration vetoed a resolution declaring Israel’s occupation of the West Bank to be illegal and calling for it to “completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.” But today, the administration abstained and allowed to pass by 14 to zero virtually the same resolution. By doing so, the US didn’t actually support the resolution – that’s why it gets only two cheers in my book – but it declared that it would no longer shield Israel from criticism by the Security Council.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that Israel’s recent history does not bode well for any resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the annexation of Jerusalem dates from June 1967 when it captured these lands in the Six-Day War from Jordan. In the following months, as recounted in Avi Raz’s book The Bride and the Dowry, Palestinian mayors, with support from officials in the Mossad, pressed Israel to establish some kind of Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, but the Israel leadership balked, “We won the war and a nice dowry, but it came with a bride we don’t like,” Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol explained. Over the next fifty years, Israel has occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem against the will of its inhabitants. About 700,000 Israelis now occupy these lands.

American Thinker

President Obama’s been exercising a scorched earth policy as he retreats to the public sector. Not just the UN vote, but he also banned oil exploration in the Atlantic and Alaskan waters.

[…]

It is the recent UN vote abstention — which has hurt Israel — which has produced the most shock. Unlike Obama’s federal shenanigans, which can be undone when Trump comes into power, the damage in the UN may be irreversible. Russia and China would surely veto any recision of the resolution.

I thought there was something significant in Mr. Judis’s disquisition at Talking Points Memo. Prior to gaining full-throated U. S. support, Israel was repeatedly attacked by its neighbors—not just the people in the Palestinian territories but Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and other Gulf Arab states. Israel responded to the Six Day War in 1967 by doing what just about any other country would have done under the circumstances: creating a buffer zone between it and its enemies. Those are the “territories” being discussed.

On the merits I have mixed feelings. I don’t think that Israel should be building settlements in the territories and I don’t think that those who espouse a Greater Israel are being helpful. Neither are the irredentist claims of the Palestinians.

While the Administration’s failure to veto the resolution has no material effect, I doubt that it’s much help, either. There are roles for both public and private diplomacy and pursuing an end to Israel’s settlement-building is probably something better relegated to private diplomacy.

However, I also agree with this statement from the White House, reported by the New York Post:

The White House said on Friday that Obama made the final decision.

“Our position is that there is one president at a time,” said Ben Rhodes, the White House national security adviser. “President Obama is the president until Jan. 20, and we are taking this action of course as US policy.”

Mr. Trump will have his say soon enough. Until then he should butt out.

I can’t help but wonder if President Obama is making a strategic error, not with respect to Israel but with respect to the future President Trump and the Republican-dominated Congress. Depending on their good will and magnanimity seems like a chancy thing at best, made worse by a set of controversial executive actions at the eleventh hour.