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Articles re: US Veto of UN Anti-Settlement Resolution

Following the vote, which came out 14-1-0, APN expressed its disappointment in a statement.

Washington Jewish Week: "UPDATE: U.S. vetoes U.N. resolution chiding Israel"
IPS: "Mideast: U.S. Vetoes Settlement Freeze"
JTA: "UN resolution hysteria: how to make enemies, not friends"
JTA: "Palestinians say U.N. resolution will get vote"


Washington Jewish Week: "UPDATE: U.S. vetoes U.N. resolution chiding Israel"

By Adam Kredo

UPDATE: AIPAC puts out a rare public statement. See below.

Major opposition from American Jewish groups, as well as a bipartisan faction of lawmakers on the Hill, led the U.S. to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution chiding Israeli settlement growth.

Lawmakers and U.S. Jewish groups launched a major offensive after it was revealed that the Obama administration was considering not using its veto to knock down the resolution, which condemned Israel's settlements as illegal and blamed it for an impasse in the peace process.

Progressive Jewish groups, such as Americans for Peace Now and J Street, had pushed the administration to let the resolution proceed, arguing that it jibed perfectly with established U.S. policies on settlements.

Following the vote, which came out 14-1-0, APN expressed its disappointment in a statement.

"President Barack Obama missed a key opportunity today to demonstrate U.S. leadership on peace. America's failure to hold both sides accountable for their actions is a contributing factor to the state of the peace process today," said APN's president and CEO, Debra DeLee. "When America doesn't lead, developments take on a momentum of their own.

It continued: "We are dismayed that America, Israel, the Palestinians, and all stakeholders in Mideast peace have reached this painful and utterly avoidable moment. We would not be here today if Israel's Netanyahu government had stopped settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as the Obama Administration begged Israel to do. And we would not be here today if President Obama had matched his policy to his rhetoric during his first two years in office."

AIPAC, on the other side of the policy spectrum, applauded the administration's move in a rare public statement:

"AIPAC expresses our appreciation that the Obama administration utilized its veto to prevent another one-sided, anti-Israel resolution from being enacted by the U.N. Security Council.

"Far too often, the United Nations has served as an open forum to isolate and delegitimize Israel-America's lone stable, democratic ally in the Middle East. AIPAC hopes the administration continues to reject any further attempts by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to isolate the Jewish state. The most effective action the administration can take to encourage peace is to use its influence to bring PA President Abbas back to the negotiating table-immediately and unconditionally.

"As President Obama has said, 'The only path to lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians is direct talks.' AIPAC shares the administration's dedication to reaching a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) through bilateral negotiations.

"Moving forward, the PA must understand that the only path to a two state solution - a Palestinian state and a safe and secure Jewish state of Israel - is through direct negotiations with Israel."

A reader points out that, in his estimate, AIPAC's statement could have been stronger. "Appreciation" and "support," as AIPAC puts it, makes it seem "like they're rightfully holding back some praise" of the Obama administration.

Interesting point...

http://washingtonjewishweek.com/main.asp?SectionID=57&SubSectionID=76&ArticleID=14425

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IPS: "Mideast: U.S. Vetoes Settlement Freeze"

Analysis by Kanya D'Almeida and Jim Lobe (united nations/washington)

(excerpts)

Amid unprecedented political ferment in the Arab world, the United States used its veto Friday to block a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel's continuing annexation of Palestinian territory and calling for a freeze on settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Poignantly, this was the first veto cast under the administration of President Barack Obama, a move that reflects over a decade of U.S. intervention in Security Council decisions regarding the Middle East: of the 14 vetos cast by the five permanent members of the Council since 2000, nine have come from the U.S., acting alone to obstruct Israel-related resolutions.

Obama himself attempted to persuade the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw the resolution in advance of a vote, and instead throw its support behind the alternate U.S.-backed resolution before the Council.

'What happened today is not just about an American veto of a resolution that is consistent with longstanding U.S. policy,' said Debra DeLee, president of Americans for Peace Now (APN), a Zionist peace group.

'The fact that the Palestinians went ahead and brought the resolution to a vote demonstrates the degree to which the Palestinians and the international community have lost faith in the peace process, and in U.S. leadership of that process,' she added, calling on Obama to take 'dramatic action,' such as putting forward its own plan for a final settlement to the conflict.

Read the entire article: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54537

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JTA: "UN resolution hysteria: how to make enemies, not friends"

Submitted by James Besser

It used to be that a primary goal of Israel's friends in this country was to ensure strong U.S.-Israel relations and to create a genuinely bipartisan wall of support for the Jewish state in U.S. politics.

Now, the goal seems more to take advantage of today's bitter partisanship to advance a specific vision of U.S.-Israeli relations or support a particular political viewpoint in Israel. Or to use Israel as just another wedge issue in the U.S. partisan wars.

How else to explain the eagerness to claim - incorrectly - that the Obama administration has been doing something unprecedented this week in negotiating over a U.N. "statement" criticizing Israel's settlement activities, something officials here felt would be less damaging than a full-blown resolution that would force Washington to exercise its veto power?

In numerous emails and blogs I've read this: the Obama administration is breaking with longstanding U.S. policy by not simply saying "no" to criticism of Israel from an undeniably biased United Nations.

As JTA's Ron Kampeas points out, this is patently untrue.

He writes: "there's a lot of nonsense out there about how withholding a veto of a resolution that Israel doesn't care for is unprecedented. (It's commonplace, and happened as recently as 2009, when the Bush administration allowed the resolution calling for an end to the Gaza War.) A slightly more sophisticated version of that nonsense emerged today from the Republican Jewish Coalition, in its statement saying that 'the United States has historically opposed U.N. Security Council actions that target Israel specifically.' Not true either. The last Bush administration did not veto a May 19 2004 resolution calling on Israel to stop demolishing Palestinian homes, and there were numerous veto-withholds during the Clinton, first Bush and Reagan administrations regarding the deportation of Palestinians and Israeli military actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and in Lebanon. All of these specifically targeted Israel."

He adds that it may be true that "there has not been a veto-withhold of a resolution specifically targeting Israel on settlements, specifically, since three during the Carter administration."

Americans for Peace Now's Lara Friedman - APN has urged the administration not to veto this one - has put together a table laying out all Israel-related UN Security Council resolutions from 1967. There were plenty of U.S. vetoes - and plenty of times Washington chose not to use its veto power.

My point here: most of what we're hearing about this resolution isn't from folks who are concerned about protecting strong U.S.-Israel relations in a difficult period; it's coming from those whose primary interest is in branding President Obama as the devil incarnate when it comes to Israel, sort of like George Soros, only worse.

It's about using Israel as a wedge issue, not seeking to broaden support.

It's about creating more dissension because it's good for partisan interests and trying to muscle U.S. policy toward support for a specific faction in Israeli politics that has always - under Republican and Democratic presidents alike - been a subject of U.S. concern.

It's about depicting every policy that concerns pro-Israel forces not as mistaken policy - which the Obama administration has produced in abundance - but as evidence of deep seated hostility to the Jewish state.

It's about making enemies, not friends, and it's hard to see how this is in the long term interests of Israel or strong U.S.-Israel relations.

I don't see mainstream pro-Israel leaders as the instigators of this tendency to go to the mattresses - to use a Godfather term - every time this administration hiccups, but I do see them too willing to uncritically accept these blatantly partisan, divisive claims and respond as if the claims are based in fact, not divisive politics.

http://www.thejewishweek.com/blogs/political_insider/un_resolution_hysteria_how_make_enemies_not_friends

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JTA: "Palestinians say U.N. resolution will get vote"

By Ron Kampeas ยท February 17, 2011

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Backed by Arab states, the Palestinians are pressing ahead with a United Nations Security Council resolution that slams Israel for settlement building.

The Palestinian delegation said Thursday that it had the votes to bring the resolution to the U.N. Security Council for a vote the next day.

The announcement, coming after a meeting of the 22-member "Arab group," which collectively has the clout to push a vote, signaled the Palestinian rejection of a compromise proposed this week by the United States calling settlement expansion a "serious obstacle to the peace process" in a Security Council President's Statement.

The U.S.-drafted statement -- a non-binding declaration that does not have the clout of a resolution -- also would have condemned rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, restoring a semblance of balance to the Palestinian-drafted resolution, which singled out only Israel.

While the resolution hews closely to longstanding U.S. policy on settlements, Israel and its U.S. supporters have said they would see withholding a veto as exposing Israel to a hostile body.

The news of the proposed U.S. compromise, leaked to Foreign Policy and Alhurra, the U.S.-run Arabic broadcaster, did not placate top Jewish Democrats who have been urging a veto.

"Compromising our support for Israel at the United Nations is not an option," said Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), the longtime senior Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives handling foreign operations appropriations. "The United States must veto the U.N. resolution on settlements to make clear we will not support such a blatant attempt to derail the peace process."

Another veteran Jewish Democrat, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) called the compromise "too clever by half" in a statement to Politico.

"Instead of doing the correct and principled thing and vetoing an inappropriate and wrong resolution, they now have opened the door to more and more anti-Israeli efforts coming to the floor of the U.N.," Weiner said.

Republicans also weighed in with opposition to the U.S.-proposed compromise. Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) is organizing a letter from House Republicans urging the Obama administration to quash any such initiative, and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a likely presidential candidate in 2012, said the administration "has shown an astonishing unwillingness to stand by Israel at the United Nations."

In fact, pro-Israel groups, while urging a veto of the current resolution, generally have given the White House high marks for quashing anti-Israel initiatives at the body.

"Mr. President, we acknowledge and appreciate that your Administration has, over the past two years, acted in many fora -- within the U.N. and elsewhere -- to support Israel's security and combat her delegitimization," said a letter Thursday from the Orthodox Union leadership, the latest Jewish group to urge a veto. "In this, you have maintained the unbroken chain of bipartisan support for Israel which commenced in 1948. We ask, as well as hope and pray, that you will continue this support for Israel at the United Nations Security Council today."

Top Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate have written in recent weeks to the Obama administration pressing for a veto.

A number of liberal Jewish groups, including J Street and Americans for Peace Now, have said that should it come to a vote, a veto would damage U.S. credibility because the Palestinian resolution mimics U.S. policy on settlements.

A group that seeks and end to Israel's presence in the West Bank garnered 10,000 signatures urging the United States to vote for the resolution.

"As the Obama Administration appears to be supporting human rights in Tunisia and Egypt and their citizens' demands for freedom, the United States will lose credibility if it vetoes a U.N. resolution that supports those same rights for Palestinians," said the Internet petition compiled by the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation.

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/02/17/2743022/lowey-chides-whute-house-on-un-resolution