America has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution, supported by all 14 other members, calling on the Israelis to desist from building settlements on land occupied in 1967, and calling such development "an obstacle to peace". The first part echoes James Baker's call, while he was Secretary of State, to "lay aside, once and for all, the unrealistic vision of a Greater Israel" and to "foreswear annexation, stop settlement activity". The second part is a statement of the obvious.
But America was "under Israeli pressure". Eh? Israel exists only on the back of the American taxpayer, presuming to use that money to maintain a mind-boggling spy network on American soil with almost complete impunity, and demonstrating complete indifference towards the sometimes lethal impact of this relationship on American citizens, a relationship encapsulated, and an impact which will undoubtedly be exacerbated, by this latest machination at the UN. As an exasperated Bill Clinton once exclaimed after a meeting with Netanyahu, "Who is the superpower here?"
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David Lindsay, the Daily Telavavivagraph's original Mossad Martyr. But no longer its only one, it seems. When did it last run a blog post from Peter Oborne? Someone is earning his keep, all right.
ReplyDeleteWhatever your position, the resolution was counter-productive because it would not have influenced Israeli behavior one iota. So what you get is another toothless resolution condemning Israel. What suppose some people hope is that by getting the UN to declare the settlements illegal they can somehow impose their will on the US Congress and force it to block US funding of Israeli settlement activities. That would not happen. Until the majority of the US public believes that the Arabs will accept and live peacefully alongside any Jewish state, there is no hope of changing US policy towards Israel in a meaningful way.
ReplyDeleteBut why should that be the question? Why isn't it about the American national interest, rather than the interest of any foreign state, never mind one as aggressively anti-American as Mossadland, Sinker of the USS Liberty and Paymaster of (among numerous others, past and present) Jonathan Pollard?
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