Friday afternoon, the UN Security Council passed a resolution by a vote of 14-0 condemning Israel’s settlements in East Jerusalem. The response to the American abstention, rather than the use of its veto, has been nothing short of hysterical on the American right. Meanwhile, the Israeli government’s reaction suggests it won’t be changing policy anytime soon, and indeed, with the sympathy from the incoming Trump administration, it may well be more intransigent. In the end, however, this is a molehill out of which the world wants to make a mountain. Nothing has really changed.
The Obama administration has not been an Israeli lapdog the way the Republican Party, and some Democrats would like (Joe Lieberman was the Senator for Tel Aviv not Connecticut), have been. Often, Israel has managed to get the White House and Congress to do things that not only aren’t good for America (oil policy) but don’t do much to benefit Israel — instead, they benefit the right wing parties in Israel. The Obama administration has been much more independent of Israel, which has annoyed many.
The resolution was filled with such humdrum and inoffensive demands as “Calls for immediate steps to prevent all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror,” “Calls upon both parties to act on the basis of international law, including international humanitarian law, and their previous agreements and obligations,” and “Calls upon all parties to continue, in the interest of the promotion of peace and security, to exert collective efforts to launch credible negotiations on all final status issues in the Middle East peace process.” Abstaining was actually shameful; the American abmassador should have voted for the resolution.
The settlements are the main bone of contention between the two sides in the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Ultimately, the fight is over land and where the boundary lies if a two-state solution is indeed the final settlement of the issue. Both parties know that the partition of the area (the word is used advisedly) will be more successful if the Jews wind up on the Israeli side, and the non-Jews wind up on the Palestinian. When Pakistan and India were partitioned, those who found themselves on the “wrong side,” wound up as refugees or corpses in many cases. For the Holy Land, that would be particularly nasty.
By placing Jewish settlements on land that is, at best, disputed, the Netanyahu government, and its predecessors, are trying to change the facts on the ground so that the boundary, when drawn, is as favorable to Israel as possible.
The settlements are going to go ahead on the schedule that existed before the resolution passed. The encroachment of settlers into lands they don’t have a right to will persist. And the Palestinians will continue to resent the erosion of their position at any future negotiating table.
All that the resolution does is demonstrate to the Netanyahu government that the Obama administration had nothing to lose by letting the motion pass and that the White House was sick and tired of Mr. Netanyahu going behind the president’s back to tamper with American politics.
What comes next? Mr. Trump takes the oath of office, and because he is the anti-Obama, he will largely go along to get along with Mr. Netanyahu. An op-ed in today’s Jerusalem Post described what that means, “The responses by the Israeli government to the United Nations Security Council resolution passed late Friday provide all the evidence one needs to understand that Israel has no intention of ending the occupation anytime soon. Recently proposed legislation would even set a new precedent toward de facto annexation of the West Bank.”
When that happens, no one will remember Friday’s abstention. It won’t matter.