With US abstention, Israel again forced to face reality of worlds rejection of settlements

[geek tragedy]

http://www.jta.org/2016/12/27/news-opinion/united-states/with-us-abstention-israel-again-forced-to-face-reality-of-worlds-rejection-of-settlements

For 24 years, the United States under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama insulated Israel from an international community that since 1967 has sought to exact consequences for its continued presence in disputed lands. After the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, those three administrations considered the isolation of the Jewish state at the United Nations to be counterproductive to encouraging Israel to take bold steps for peace.

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But with a couple of notable exceptions – Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s pullout from Gaza and a patch of the West Bank in 2005, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2010 settlement freeze – Israeli settlement expansion continued unabated in that period, despite widening cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. By 2004, George W. Bush had effectively recognized the large settlement blocs bordering 1967 Israel as “realities on the ground” and suggested that the Palestinians would be compensated for the territory with land swaps.

Obama’s apparent message to the world on Friday is that incentives did not work in slowing settlement expansion. The carrot having wilted, the president reintroduced the stick.

Obama administration officials have said plainly that the expansion of settlements absent a peace process led to the decision to abstain. Samantha Power, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations, in her explanation of the abstention, listed the considerations that made the administration hesitate to allow the resolution – chief among them the historic anti-Israel bias at the United Nations and Palestinian intransigence. But she also noted that since the Oslo Accords, the settler population has increased by 355,000.

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As much as the language in the resolution has stirred cries of “unprecedented” in Israel and in some pro-Israel precincts in the United States, it is broadly consistent with resolutions that the United States allowed from 1967 at least through the end of Jimmy Carter’s presidency in January 1981.

Last week’s resolution reaffirmed “that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity,” and constituted a “flagrant violation” of international law. Resolution 465, passed in March 1980 under Carter with a U.S. vote in favor, determined that “all measures” that would change the physical or demographic character of the occupied lands, including Jerusalem, “have no legal validity” and are a “flagrant violation” of the Fourth Geneva Convention. It further called on countries to “distinguish” between Israel and the West Bank.

Under the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the council did not explicitly reject settlements as illegal, but referred to earlier resolutions that did so while continuing to assail the occupation as untenable. Resolution 605, passed under Reagan with a U.S. abstention in 1987, “recalled” Resolution 465 passed under Carter and said the council was “gravely concerned and alarmed by the deterioration” in the territories. Under George H.W. Bush, Security Council resolutions consistently decried the “deteriorating” situation and admonished Israel for its “violation” of Geneva conventions.

All they have left is Trump.