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Israel Summons U.S. Ambassador over UN Vote
(Washington Post) Ruth Eglash - The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, was requested Sunday to attend a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over America's failure to prevent a UN Security Council resolution harshly criticizing Israel from passing, a senior official in the prime minister's office said. Breaking with a long-standing policy of blocking resolutions dealing with Israel, the U.S. did not use its veto to stop its passage on Friday, opting to abstain instead. Israel summoned all envoys from countries that have diplomatic relations with it and which voted in favor of the resolution. "From the information 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. "Over decades, American administrations and Israeli governments had disagreed about settlements, but we agreed that the Security Council was not the place to resolve this issue," he said. "As I told John Kerry on Thursday, friends don't take friends to the Security Council." Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and until recently the director general of Israel's Foreign Ministry, said it was possible to bring another resolution to supersede the previous one. This happened, he said, with a 1975 UN decision stating that Zionism is racism. It took nearly 20 years and a unique set of political circumstances, including the support of former U.S. president George H.W. Bush, to change that decision, Gold said. "I can't speculate about the Trump administration, but I think his instincts about how this resolution damages peacemaking and negotiations are absolutely correct," said Gold, who served as Israel's ambassador to the UN from 1997 to 1999.