On December 23, the United States Ambassador to the UN abstained on UN Security Council resolution 2334, which condemned Israel’s settlement activity in the occupied territory of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The language is tentative. It does not call the settlements illegal, but only having no “legal validity”. In the world of international law, the difference might not be significant.
Israel pressured Egypt to withdraw the resolution, which it did, and it pressured the U.S. to veto it, which it did not. Malaysia, New Zealand, Venezuela and Senegal sponsored the resolution, which passed with 14 votes in favour and one abstention (the U.S.). Ambassadors around the table hoped that the vote would push towards the two-state solution, the “common aspiration of the international community”, said Chinese Ambassador Wu Haitao.
The resolution and the occupation
Five years previously, during the high point of the Arab Spring, the U.S. had vetoed a similar resolution. Then U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said that her country rejects “in the strongest terms the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity”. So then why veto the resolution, which the U.S. would abstain on five years later? In 2011, Ms. Rice said that the resolution would not further the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel, the subtext read, would lash out against the Palestinians. This is precisely what the Israelis now…