"US Veto at Security Council May no Longer be a Given"

Thunderbolt · Nov 4, 2014

US veto at Security Council may no longer be a given

With ties growing colder, some in Jerusalem fear Washington’s protection at the UN cannot be taken for granted, and that the midterms may further complicate the picture

By Raphael Ahren November 4, 2014, 1:44 pm 6

After Jeffrey Goldberg’s infamous “chicken(*)(*)(*)(*)” article, it is hard to deny that ties between the Israeli government and the current US administration have reached a nadir. Even Yaacov Amidror, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s former national security adviser, admitted this week that “relations between Israel and the US have deteriorated to an all-time low.”

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Worse than the bad language and backroom bickering, though, is the fear that the frosty relationship may mean Israel can no longer rely on Washington’s veto in the Security Council, which has been a rock-solid given in defense of Israel for decades.

It’s no secret that Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama have little love lost for each other, between disputes over an Iranian nuclear deal and building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Less discussed publicly is the fear that the administration will abandon Israel on the Palestinian question at the UN. The Palestinians are planning to go the United Nations Security Council with a draft resolution calling for an Israel withdrawal by November 2016 from all areas captured in 1967. They originally wanted to submit it by October but will probably wait for January, when the Security Council membership will be more favorable to their cause.

A few years ago, there would have been no question that the US would have vetoed any such resolution. In February 2011, Washington vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements (despite the US’s longstanding opposition to settlement-building), thwarting the council’s other 14 members, who all voted in favor. A year later, the administration successfully blocked the Palestinians’ attempt to become full UN members.

But since then, ties between the Jerusalem and Washington have gone drastically downhill, and the American veto can apparently no longer be taken for granted.

“Without US support in the international arena, and especially in the UN Security Council, Israel would be in a very difficult position today, to the point of diplomatic and economic isolation,” Amidror wrote Monday in a paper for the BESA Center for Strategic Studies.

Asked by The Times of Israel whether he fears Washington could possibly refrain from using its veto in January, he indicated that while unlikely, such a scenario is not entirely unthinkable. “It doesn’t seem logical that they wouldn’t use their veto. But I don’t know.”

Netanyahu is indeed worried that the US will “abandon” Israel at the UN, Israeli journalist Ariel Kahane reported Sunday on the NRG website [Hebrew link], quoting senior ministers. “The prime minister told colleagues in recent days … that his office’s understanding of the issue and the government’s take on it is that the Americans will not cast a veto against a resolution that reaches the Security Council,” Kahane later elaborated in a newspaper interview.

Officially, Jerusalem has faith in the Americans. “The US has had a consistent position of refusing to support one-sided UN resolutions against Israel, and I have no reason to believe that America’s position is about to change,” a senior official in the Prime Minister’s Office told The Times of Israel this week.

Even Danny Danon, a hawkish Likud lawmaker who doesn’t mince words in his criticism of the White House, said Israel could depend on the support of its biggest ally, even while anonymous senior US administration officials hurl obscenities at the prime minister.

“Our shared values will ensure that the American people and the American leaders will stand with Israel,” he said. Preventing the Palestinians from getting their way at the UN is “in the interest of the American people,” he told The Times of Israel. “Our fight against Islam extremism and terrorism is their fight.”

Indeed, the recognition of a Palestinian state in the absence of a negotiated agreement with Israel is against declared US policy, noted Robbie Sabel, a former legal adviser to Israel’s Foreign Ministry and professor of international law at Hebrew University. Furthermore, current US law prohibits the administration from granting rights at the UN to bodies that aren’t recognized as a state, he noted. To circumvent this, “the federal government could declare that Palestine is already a state. But it is highly unlikely that it would do that.”

Israel can thus be confident that the administration will not allow the Security Council to pass a resolution setting a timetable for an Israel withdrawal, or even one that would merely call for Palestine to be admitted to the UN as a full member state (without deadline for an Israeli withdrawal), he asserted.

“At the same time the US will use [the question of] their veto as leverage to pressure Israel to restart another round of peace negotiations with the Palestinians,” Sabel said.

There is also speculation that the administration, unwilling to use its veto (which would be needed if nine Security Council members vote in favor), will propose to the Palestinians an alternative version of the draft resolution — one that would condemn Israeli settlement activity as illegal under international law. In the past, the US blocked such resolutions, but in the current climate it might well support it. Rumor has it that Washington and Ramallah are already in close contact regarding the wording of such a draft resolution.

‘I wish I could say the veto is in our pocket, but I don’t think that’s the case’

Israeli and American officials refused to comment on these rumors. Asked about the veto, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki last week did not want to predict how the US will act when the Palestinians turn to the UN, merely saying that the administration doesn’t “have information yet on what the plan is.”

Not everyone is sure that the US would put the kibosh on the Palestinians’ maneuver at the UN. “I wish I could say the veto is in our pocket, but I don’t think that’s the case,” said Oded Eran, a retired former Israeli top diplomat. “A lot will depend on the language of the draft resolution and other issues.”

If the Palestinian draft resolution calls for the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital, Israel can be sure of an American veto, assessed Eran, a former deputy director general at the Foreign Ministry and deputy chief of the Israeli embassy in Washington. “The Americans cannot accept, nor can anyone else, that the Security Council decides on borders and what the capital of a new member state would be, especially not in this region.”

But if the resolution calls for the creation of a Palestinian state, or even an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank without getting into the specifics, it is indeed plausible that the current administration would support it, he said.

True, the US thwarted the Palestinians’ previous attempts at enhanced UN status, but “that was during a time when there was a peace process. Today, there is nothing,” said Eran, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies. The sorry state of personal relations between the president and the prime minister — and between individual top ministers in the two countries — doesn’t help either, he added.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, right, welcomes Secretary of State John Kerry, left, to his office at the Pentagon in Washington, Monday, May 6, 2013 (photo credit: AP/Susan Walsh)

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, right, welcomes Secretary of State John Kerry, left, to his office at the Pentagon in Washington, Monday, May 6, 2013 (photo credit: AP/Susan Walsh)

The outcome of Tuesday’s midterm elections could be crucial. Should Democrats pull off a surprise win, they could be emboldened to shun Israel at Turtle Bay.

But if the Democrats do poorly, as they are expected to, Secretary of State John Kerry or Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel might be replaced, which could change Washington’s Middle East policy in Israel’s favor, according to Shmuel Sandler, an expert on American foreign policy and US-Israel relations at Bar-Ilan University.

Plus, if the Democrats are defeated, they will immediately start to plan for the 2016 presidential elections and therefore refrain from anything that would anger the pro-Israel community, he predicted.

“That’s why we’re not going to see another slap in the face of Israel,” he said. After the “chicken(*)(*)(*)(*)” insults and the expected Iran deal, the Americans will not also abandon Israel at the UN, Sandler surmised. “They can’t slap Israel three times.”

On the other hand, Washington will keep all options on the table regarding a veto at the Security Council in order to threaten Jerusalem as long as possible, he suggested, and he admitted that a lame duck president could indeed be dangerous to Israel.

After six years during which Obama had to restrain himself despite all his grievances about what he considers Israeli recalcitrance, after the midterm elections there is very little that could hold him back.

“But on the other hand,” Sandler said, “Obama doesn’t want to go down in history as person who destroyed relations between the US and Israel.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-veto-at-security-council-veto-may-no-longer-be-a-given/
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The situation is dangerous.
Imagine a UN resolution for Great Britain forcing it to cede Scotland, Wales and North Ireland to a "peaceful IS State", ruled by a "moderate leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi".
What would happen to the rest of Great Britain a few years (or even months) later ?
Exactly this (the second Holocaust) will happen if this genocidal "peace resolution" is approved

Thunderbolt · Nov 6, 2014

More on the same issue

Mr. President, Quash Rumors of Supporting ‘Palestine’ on Security Council

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has called upon President Barack Obama to publicly quash rumors that he will abandon Israel in the United Nations Security Council and permit a resolution to pass awarding UN membership to ‘Palestine,’ by publicly stating that the United States, in accordance with long-standing U.S. policy, will veto any such Palestinian attempt.

In recent days, reports have appeared suggesting that the Obama Administration is intending to abandon Israel in the United Nations Security Council in its upcoming session in January when Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) is expected to seek admission for ‘Palestine’ at the UN as a full member state. The Security Council alone has the power to admits new members to the UN.
“President Obama has stated numerous times that the U.S/Israeli relationship is ‘sacrosanct’ and ‘unbreakable’ –– and so it should be.”

The Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot reported the possibility of a scenario along these lines on October 19, while, this week, the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote, “the post-November White House will be much less interested in defending Israel from hostile resolutions at the United Nations, where Israel is regularly scapegoated. The Obama administration may be looking to make Israel pay direct costs for its settlement policies. Next year, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, will quite possibly seek full UN recognition for Palestine. I imagine that the U.S. will still try to block such a move in the Security Council, but it might do so by helping to craft a stridently anti-settlement resolution in its place. Such a resolution would isolate Israel from the international community” (Jeffrey Goldberg, ‘The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here,’ The Atlantic, October 28, 2014).

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “President Obama has stated numerous times that the U.S/Israeli relationship is ‘sacrosanct’ and ‘unbreakable’ –– and so it should be.

“Irrespective of whatever disagreements and tensions that have bedeviled the relationship between his Administration and the Israeli government, this is an issue on a different plane: there simply should not be any divergence between Washington and Jerusalem.

“The admission of a make-believe state of ‘Palestine’ to the United Nations cannot be permitted because of disagreements –– and an Administration that would permit this to happen because of disagreements would stand revealed before the world as a fraudulent friend of Israel. It would stand revealed as going back on its original opposition to the admission of ‘Palestine’ as a non-state member in 2012.

“We call upon President Obama to immediately quash these rumors that he is planning to abandon Israel in the Security Council by stating publicly that his Administration will veto any resolution brought before the UN Security Council seeking to obtain UN membership for ‘Palestine.’

“President Obama should also state publicly that he will not present a resolution criticizing Israel in the Security Council over Jews living in eastern Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria. The place to work out disagreements on policy with Israel is in discussions with Israel officials, as befits relations between allies –– not by indulging Israel’s enemies in the Security Council in a fit of malice and pique.”

http://zoa.org/2014/11/10265275-zoa-mr-president-publicly-affirm-you-will-veto-palestine-on-un-security-council/
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RiaRaeb · Nov 6, 2014

Thunderbolt said: ↑

The situation is dangerous.
Imagine a UN resolution for Great Britain forcing it to cede Scotland, Wales and North Ireland to a "peaceful IS State", ruled by a "moderate leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi".
What would happen to the rest of Great Britain a few years (or even months) later ?
Exactly this (the second Holocaust) will happen if this genocidal "peace resolution" is approved
Click to expand...

Are the nasty Americans threatening to stop giving carte blanche to anything Israel does?

Who gave americans the right to make up their own minds, how dare they!

Thunderbolt · Nov 6, 2014

I have to repeat

Imagine a UN resolution on Great Britain forcing it to cede Scotland, Wales and North Ireland to a "peaceful IS State", ruled by a "moderate leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi".
What would happen to the rest of Great Britain a few years (or even months) later ?
Exactly this (the second Holocaust) will happen if this genocidal "peace resolution" is approved
Click to expand...

RiaRaeb · Nov 6, 2014

Thunderbolt said: ↑

I have to repeat
Click to expand...

In the case of Northern Ireland we made peace with the terrorists, willing to surrender sovereignty to the majority vote in NI.
Note we did not attack Eire even when rockets and mortars were being fired across the border, we did not destroy terrorists homes and make their families homeless.
In the case of Scotland they got a referendum but liked the Union so much they decided to stay!

Israel choose to not make peace when it could, now it may get its reward.

Thunderbolt · Nov 6, 2014

Did you understand the question ?
Ceding Scotland, Wales and North Ireland to the IS ?
And the IS killed "just" one Briton, while the PLO openly boasts to have murdered "11 000 Israelis".

http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/abbas-fatah-movement-brags-it-killed-11000-israelis/2014/08/11/

RiaRaeb · Nov 6, 2014

Thunderbolt said: ↑

Did you understand the question ?
Ceding Scotland, Wales and North Ireland to the IS ?
And the IS killed "just" one Briton, while the PLO openly boasts to have murdered "11 000 Israelis".

http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/abbas-fatah-movement-brags-it-killed-11000-israelis/2014/08/11/
Click to expand...

Britain has a permanent seat on the UN security council, we do not need to rely on the USA, however if we did, I somewhat doubt we would be as stupid as to think we could take America's help and then expect their unqualified support no matter what we did. But if we did then we would have to put up with it, and either choose to except what the world wants us to do or fight on alone.

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