The United States yesterday vetoed a draft UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements on Palestinian land after the Palestinians refused a compromise offer from Washington.
The US move was welcomed by American pro-Israel groups, some of which have previously criticised US President Barack Obama’s administration for what they see as its record of lukewarm support for Israel.
The other 14 Security Council members voted in favour of the draft resolution. But the United States, as one of the five permanent council members with the power to block any action by the Security Council, voted against it and struck it down.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told council members that the veto “should not be misunderstood to mean we support settlement activity.” The US position is that continued Israeli settlements lack legitimacy, she said.
But Rice said the draft “risks hardening the position of both sides” and reiterated the US view that settlements and other contentious issues should be resolved in direct Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
The resolution described the settlements as “illegal” and urged the Jewish state to “immediately and completely” halt all settlement activities. Diplomats said the views contained in the resolution, which would have been legally binding had it passed, are generally supported by the Obama administration.
However, they said, the United States refuses to allow the Security Council to intervene with binding resolutions on issues it feels belongs to direct peace talks.
Israeli Ambassador Meron Reuben, opposing the resolution, urged the Palestinians to “return to negotiations without preconditions.” US-brokered peace talks collapsed last year after Israel refused to extend a moratorium on settlements.
The Palestinians say continued building flouts the internationally backed peace plan that will permit them to create a viable, contiguous state on the land after a treaty with Israel to end its occupation and 62 years of conflict.
Israel says this is an excuse for avoiding peace talks and a precondition never demanded before during 17 years of negotiation, which has so far produced no agreement.
World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder thanked Obama, saying his veto showed “America’s support for the rights of the Jewish state and for the Middle East peace process.” Other pro-Israel groups also praised Obama.
Obama’s offer to support a non-binding Security Council statement chiding Israel over the settlements instead of a binding resolution had been criticised by pro-Israel lobby groups and some members of the US Congress.
British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, speaking on behalf of Britain, France and Germany, condemned Israeli settlements as “illegal under international law.”
He added that the European Union’s three biggest nations hope that an independent state of Palestine will join the United Nations as a new member state by September 2011.
Several European Union member states, including Portugal, Slovenia and Sweden, joined the long list of over 100 co-sponsors of the resolution.
The Palestinian Authority earlier yesterday decided to insist that the resolution be put to the council, and rejected the US compromise offer despite a telephone call from Obama to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday.
The permanent Palestinian observer to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, told the council after the vote that the US veto could send the wrong signal to Israel. “We fear ... that the message sent today may be one that further encourages Israeli intransigence and impunity,” he said.
Mansour declined to comment on media reports that Obama warned Abbas of repercussions if the Palestinians did not withdraw the draft resolution.
The decision to put it to a vote was made unanimously by the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s executive and the central committee of Abbas’s Fatah movement at a meeting in Ramallah yesterday to discuss Obama’s appeal to Abbas.
“The Palestinian leadership has decided to proceed to the UN Security Council, to pressure Israel to halt settlement activities. The decision was taken despite American pressure,” said Wasel Abu Yousef, a PLO executive member.
New York-based Human Rights Watch issued a statement saying the US veto undermined international law and suggested the Obama administration was being hypocritical.
“President Obama wants to tell the Arab world in his speeches that he opposes settlements, but he won’t let the Security Council tell Israel to stop them in a legally binding way,” said HRW’s Middle East director, Sarah Leah Whitson.
Prior to yesterday’s vote, 10 council resolutions had been vetoed by one or more of the five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — since 2000.
Of those, 10 were US vetoes, nine of them related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The last US vetoes were two in 2006, both related to Israel.
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