For a second consecutive day on Sunday, the prime minister of Israel denounced President Barack Obama’s administration, publicly accusing it of having orchestrated Friday’s United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Jewish settlements in occupied territories, according to the New York Times.
Despite denials from Washington, Benjamin Netanyahu publicly decried the fact that the United States refrained from using its veto power during the vote as it had done many times in the past, and abstained in the 14-to-0 adoption of a resolution opposing the fast-expanding Jewish settlements.
“From the information that we have, we have no doubt that the Obama administration initiated it, stood behind it, coordinated on the wording and demanded that it be passed,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday.
Netanyahu is referring to the passing of Resolution 2334, which marked a sharp international rebuke of Israeli-settlement policies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem—territories captured in the 1967 Six-Day War and claimed by the Palestinians as parts of a future independent state. ABC News reports that some 600,000 Israelis now live in the two areas.
According to ABC, Netanyahu has underplayed the embarrassment that all 14 other nations on the Security Council voted in favor of the measure. Those votes came from countries that Netanyahu loves to boast of cultivating relations with, including Russia and China and nations across the developing world.
After Friday's vote, Netanyahu's office said he looked forward to working with incoming U.S. President Donald Trump “to negate the harmful effects of this absurd resolution.”
The president-elect has called for a U.S. veto of the resolution, and after the vote, Trump vowed that “things will be different after Jan. 20th.”
Trump has also appointed an outspoken supporter and donor to the settlements, his longtime attorney David Friedman, as ambassador to Israel. He has also vowed to make good on a promise to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem, home to many of its most holy religious sites, as the capital of the future state to which they aspire, and many fear the move could spark violence in the region.
Read more at the New York Times and ABC News.