{The United Nations Security Council rejected a resolution backed by Arab states that would have ordered Israel to withdraw within three years from territories it captured in the 1967 Six-Day War. }
The measure, introduced by Jordan, failed by a vote of 8-2 today, falling one short of the nine needed for a majority. The U.S. and Australia voted against the measure, while five nations on the 15-member council abstained.
The resolution, which Israel had condemned and the U.S. promised to veto, was a largely symbolic move by Arab states to strengthen the hand of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who’s under domestic political pressure to fight for statehood after the U.S. effort to revive negotiations with Israel collapsed earlier this year.
It called for a negotiated peace deal within 12 months that would create two contiguous independent states based on the borders that existed before the 1967 war, modified by agreed-upon land swaps. Israel would have been required to withdraw from its occupied territories by the end of 2017.
U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power faulted the resolution for offering “unconstructive deadlines that take no account of Israel’s legitimate security concerns.”
While a peace deal is possible through negotiations, Power said, “This resolution sets the stage for more division, not for compromise.”
Secretary of State John Kerry had called about 13 foreign leaders in the last two days urging the defeat of the resolution, said Jeff Rathke, a State Department spokesman.
Palestinian Response
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy to the UN, said the Palestinian leadership will meet tomorrow to consider its next steps.
“There is a global consensus on the two-state solution,” Mansour said at the UN session. “Why are we facing another Security Council failure as the situation unravels?”
Any renewed peace talks are effectively on hold at least until after Israel’s parliamentary elections in March.
“The council has both a legal and moral responsibility to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” said Dina Kawar, Jordan’s ambassador. “The result of this, our decision here, must not prevent us from intensifying our efforts” to reach a two-state solution.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had condemned Abbas’s push for a UN-mandated Israeli withdrawal. In a text message from his office earlier this month, Netanyahu said Abbas “doesn’t understand that the result will be the Hamas takeover of Judea and Samaria — exactly as previously happened in Gaza.”
‘Dangerous’ Situation
Judea and Samaria are the Biblical names for the West Bank, which is governed by Abbas’s Palestinian Authority. Hamas, which the U.S. and Israel designate as a terrorist group, controls the Gaza Strip.
Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, who voted for the resolution, said its failure risks leaving “a dangerous status quo which we can’t accept.”
France, China, Argentina, Chad, Chile, Jordan and Luxembourg also voted for the resolution. Lithuania, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Korea and the U.K. abstained.
{{Bloomberg}}
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