UN Security Council - 2008
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
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Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, trying to transform defeat into victory, will ask the United Nations General Assembly to back the anti-Israel motion that the United States Friday.
The PA’s determination to bypass the United States reflects increasing confidence that the Obama administration has diminishing influence in the international community at large and in the Arab world in particular.
Fourteen members of the United Nations Security Council voted in favor of a Lebanese-sponsored motion condemning Israel for allowing Jews to live in Judea and Samaria, restored to the Jewish State in the 1967 Six-Day War after nearly 2,000 years of rule under foreign countries, including the Roman and the Turkish Ottoman empires.
PA officials are using the American veto as a catalyst to organize what they hope will be aimed at the Obama administration as well as Israel. The PA announced that in September it will ask the U.N. General Assembly, where there are no veto powers, to vote for the resolution.
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told IDF Army Radio Sunday that the veto – the first-ever exercised by the Obama administration – proved that the United States is the only country that “speaks the truth” concerning the necessity for direct talks between the PA and Israel. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said that although the Obama administration backs the PA objections to Jews living in Judea and Samaria, there is no alternative to direct talks to deal with PA conditions for its proposed statehood.
Implicitly anticipating a PA diplomatic victory in the General Assembly, Ayalon said the international body is a “rubber stamp” where the Arab world has an automatic majority.
Nabil Shaath, a senior PA official, said Sunday that the American government should be “ashamed” of its veto and that large rallies will direct their anger against the United States.
He also rejected the possibility that the United States would cut off funds to the Palestinian Authority for not agreeing to a request to withdraw the motion, sponsored by Lebanon. Shaath explained that the Obama administration has threatened several times in the past to cut funds, citing the former Fatah-Hamas unity government as an example.
