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Will the U.S. Stop Backing Israel at the UN?

(Times of Israel) Raphael Ahren - Officials say that President Barack Obama is strongly considering backing Palestinian moves at the UN Security Council. This could mean that Washington will hold back from vetoing a French or Jordanian resolution calling for the creation of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines, or even propose its own resolution seeking to enshrine the parameters of a future peace deal. However, a senior Israeli official said Tuesday, "U.S. policy has always been that peace will be achieved by direct negotiations between the parties. That is the correct policy - there's no other way to achieve peace." At the end of the day, any Security Council resolution on Palestine will not be enforceable, said Robbie Sabel, a former legal adviser to Israel's Foreign Ministry, unless it was passed under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which deals with threats to world peace or "acts of aggression." But the Security Council has never passed a resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict under Chapter VII. Thus, any resolution on the two-state solution would not be much more than a "non-binding recommendation." At the same time, "a UN Security Council resolution that explicitly delineated Israel's future borders would first and foremost undermine Israel's bilateral agreement with the Palestinians, that made the future of borders an issue for negotiations and not something that would be imposed from the outside," said Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the UN and close Netanyahu adviser. A Security Council resolution demanding an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines, even with minor land swaps, would contradict the spirit of Resolution 242, he argued. "It should be stressed that in a 1975 memorandum between the U.S. and Israel, Washington gave assurances that it would vote against any initiative in the Security Council that would alter adversely or change Resolution 242 and 338 [after the Yom Kippur War] 'in ways that are incompatible with their original purpose.'"
2015-03-31 00:00:00
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