The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution on Friday pronouncing illegal any Jewish settlement in territory Israel acquired in 1967. Breaking with longstanding policy, the U.S., rather than exercising its customary veto, abstained from voting. As the Israeli ambassador Danny Danon remarked the resolution “sends a message” to Palestinian leaders that they “should continue on the path of terrorism and incitement [and] continue to seek meaningless statements from the international community.” In fact, argue Elliott Abrams and Michael Singh, the Security Council’s action only makes peace more difficult:
[T]he resolution fails to distinguish between construction in the so-called blocs—that is, settlements west of Israel’s security barrier in which about 80 percent of settlers live—and construction east of the barrier. Building in the major blocs is relatively uncontroversial in Israel and rarely the subject of Palestinian protests. . . .
[It also] demands the cessation of all settlement activities everywhere. This is unnecessary and unrealistic—Israelis will not bring life to a halt in towns that no one disputes they will keep—and is more likely to obstruct than facilitate the revival of peace talks. . . .
For the resolution does indeed dictate terms to Israel, not merely condemn settlement activity. It adopts, as noted above, the position that the 1967 lines, rather than today’s realities, should form the basis of talks—despite the fact that many Israeli communities east of those lines are decades old and that Jews have had a near-continuous presence in the West Bank for thousands of years.
It implicitly prejudges the disposition of east Jerusalem—one of the most contentious issues dividing the parties—by characterizing Israeli construction there as settlement activity, a stance Israelis reject. The resolution would demand an absolute halt to construction in east Jerusalem, even in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, something no Israeli government ever would agree to do.
Yet the resolution is conspicuously silent on Israeli concerns. There is no call for other states to recognize Israel’s existence—much less its status as a Jewish state—and end the conflict against it. . . . Peace in the Middle East will not be accomplished through a UN vote. Rather, it will require renewed U.S. leadership in the region and the rebuilding of relationships of trust with all of our partners there.
Read more on Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-united-states-just-made-middle-east-peace-harder/2016/12/23/d0ecc3ea-c923-11e6-bf4b-2c064d32a4bf_story.html