The United Nations Security Council’s Resolution 2334, adopted unanimously last Friday, implies more than condemning Israel’s settlement policy. It also expresses the international community’s frustration and disgust with Israel’s continued occupation of the Palestinian lands and vehement resistance to a negotiated resolution of the long running Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Passed with the US abstaining, the resolution is a major blow to right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a rebuff to the US president-elect, Donald Trump, who heavily lobbied against it.
Mr Netanyahu has called the council’s act “shameful”, and has vowed to ignore it and to reassess Israel’s ties with the United Nations. Mr Trump has also said that once he takes office on January 20, he will be all for Israel.
Of course, Israel has often been contemptuous of the United Nations, given a majority of its member states’ opposition to Israel’s brutal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967 and inhumane blockade of the Gaza Strip since 2007. The only UN Security Council resolution that Israel has ever fully embraced is the one that recommended the partition of Palestine, enabling the Zionist leadership to proclaim the independent state of Israel in 1948. However, Resolution 2334 is unlike the previous ones. It sends a powerful message on several fronts.
Read the full article by Amin Saikal at The Age.