The US veto

The US veto of an anti-Israel resolution introduced by the Palestinians in the UN Security Council last week was an important step by President Obama. In the sense that Israel is the main ally of the US in the Middle East, and if the US had abandoned support for Israel that would have been a signal to all enemies of Israel (and there are plenty of them even though some are otherwise occupied right now) that the US is an unreliable ally and Israel is fair game. But, at the same time the US went to great lengths to curry favor with the sponsors of this resolution, which asked for the SC to condemn Israeli building in the West Bank and label it "illegal," by having the US representative to the UN, Susan Rice, herself label the Israeli settlements as "illegitimate." To anyone listening to her diatribe one would have expected her to vote for the resolution. In effect the US was saying to Israel's enemies, "yes, you are right, we agree with you, but we are voting against the resolution anyway." This is not a solid position to hold, one that lacks credibility and commitment, and as Caroline Glick called it in her column (Tues, Feb 22) "Obama's devastatingly mixed signals."

Apparently before the vote, Pres. Obama himself spent 90 mins on the phone trying to persuade Pres. Abbas of the PA not to introduce the resolution, yet Abbas defied him, and went ahead anyway. This tells us two things, first Abbas has nothing to fear from Obama, after all his "engagement" policy and being nice to the Arabs, he has no influence whatsoever, and it tells us that Abbas must have had a very good reason to want to defy the US. The most obvious one is to show the Palestinian "street" that he is in fact a Palestinian patriot, not a US "puppet," and that even though the stories of his being prepared to compromise with Israel that were published in Al Jazeera were true, nevertheless he is still to be trusted. But, Abbas is not standing anyway in the future PA elections. The PA has now announced that it will "boycott" the US Government, calling Obama "despicable" for vetoing their resolution, and PM Fayyad said that the PA would be prepared to give up US aid worth m$223 last year, although he did not say how the PA would cover its more than b$1 deficit.

What was most disturbing about this vote is that the other 14 members of the SC voted for the resolution. Not only was this the usual anti-Israel majority, but the UK and France voted for the resolution. This is disgusting given that the UK was responsible under the Palestine Mandate for assuring that Jews could settle anywhere in Palestine in order to establish the Jewish "homeland." At no point in history has this legal postion been reversed, even if a lot of Arabs happen to live there. The UK Government might issue a statement saying that they favor the estblishment of an Arab State in Palestine (apart form Jordan), but they cannot argue that the Jewish settlements are "illegal." The US itself is trying to get around this problem by referring to the settlements as "illegitimate." This subtle difference has been used by Obama himself and Secty, of State Clinton. What it means is that the US understands that the settlements are not "illegal" but opposes their presence anyway. But, Israel's enemies are not going to be put off by this subtlety.

Let's see where the Arab countries are when they stop killing each other. Can they put their own houses in order before trying to tell Israel what it should do? Meanwhile the UN SC voted unanimously to condemn Muammar Qaddafi and his supporters for killing hundreds of protesters indiscriminantly in Libya. At least they got that one right.