How the U.S. Can Repudiate the Recent UN Resolution on Israel

Although the recent Security Council resolution condemning Israel—unlike those produced by other UN organs—has actual legal force, the next American president has the ability to limit its damage, as Abraham Sofaer argues:

[Donald Trump, once] president, can repudiate any international agreement. . . . He should thus inform the UN secretary-general before his first [required report on Resolution 2334] on March 23, 2017, that the U.S. repudiates the resolution—that the U.S. will veto any effort to enforce its conclusions. He should also seek legislation imposing trade sanctions on states that rely on the resolution to discriminate against Israel, as the U.S. did successfully against the Arab boycott.

Sofaer also refutes the claim of Obama administration officials, and their defenders in the media, who insist that the American decision not to veto the resolution is consistent with established policy:

Ambassador Samantha Power claimed U.S. presidents [including Ronald Reagan] have all been against expanding settlements. But no administration has ever supported calling all Israeli settlements “flagrant violations of international law,” not even the Obama administration, which vetoed a similar resolution in 2011.

President Reagan regarded the settlements as “legal,” and most other presidents have refrained from relying on inapposite principles of international law, shunning such ineffective hectoring. No administration has ever claimed Israel, as an “occupying power” during “war” must treat Palestine as a state. . . .

The abstention, in short, was a shameful act openly touted as punishment for Israel’s failure to abide by a U.S. policy that set back the prospects of peace. The Trump administration must repudiate Resolution 2334 in order to preserve the possibility of a two-state solution, by recognizing that Israel’s settlements are not an obstacle to peace if peace were genuinely pursued.

Read more at Investor’s Business Daily

More about: Donald Trump, Israel & Zionism, Ronald Reagan, Samantha Power, United Nations

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF