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It was always going to be a struggle for the U.S. to dissuade its Arab allies from going ahead with a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. But last week's people-power rebellion in Tunisia has only made Washington's effort to lobby against the plan more difficult. Tunisia will have given the autocratic leaders of countries such as Egypt and Jordan more reason to fear their own people. For those regimes, symbolically challenging unconditional U.S. support for Israel is a low-cost gesture that will play well on the restive street.
Going ahead with the resolution, discussed Wednesday at the Security Council, demanding an immediate halt to all Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is, of course, a vote of no-confidence in U.S. peacemaking efforts. And it creates an immediate headache for the Obama Administration, over whether to invoke the U.S. veto - as Washington has traditionally done on Council resolutions critical of Israel. The twist this time: the substance of the current resolution largely echoes the Administration's own stated positions.
"If the proposed resolution is consistent with existing and established U.S. policies," the former officials write, "then deploying a veto would severely undermine U.S. credibility and interests, placing us firmly outside of the international consensus, and further diminishing our ability to mediate this conflict."
Why a U.N. Resolution on Israel Leaves Obama Facing a Dilemma - Yahoo! News
Going ahead with the resolution, discussed Wednesday at the Security Council, demanding an immediate halt to all Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is, of course, a vote of no-confidence in U.S. peacemaking efforts. And it creates an immediate headache for the Obama Administration, over whether to invoke the U.S. veto - as Washington has traditionally done on Council resolutions critical of Israel. The twist this time: the substance of the current resolution largely echoes the Administration's own stated positions.
"If the proposed resolution is consistent with existing and established U.S. policies," the former officials write, "then deploying a veto would severely undermine U.S. credibility and interests, placing us firmly outside of the international consensus, and further diminishing our ability to mediate this conflict."
Why a U.N. Resolution on Israel Leaves Obama Facing a Dilemma - Yahoo! News
