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Israelis Called Trump Only After Failing to Persuade Obama on UN Veto

(CNN) Elise Labott - A senior Israeli official told CNN that his country approached Trump after it had failed to persuade the Obama administration to veto the planned UN Security Council resolution. The official said that Israel "implored the White House not to go ahead and told them that if they did, we would have no choice but to reach out to President-elect Trump. We did reach out to the President-elect and are deeply appreciative that he weighed in, which was not a simple thing to do." "It's unprecedented that a President-elect would pronounce on a matter of U.S. policy before he became president," said Aaron David Miller, a vice president at the Wilson Center. An Israeli official argued, "What is unprecedented is to undermine an incoming administration in this way." Israeli officials say they believe that Trump will seek to make good on his pledge to negotiate what he has called the "ultimate deal" between Israelis and Palestinians. "This action at the UN would make it harder for him to do that." Secretary of State John Kerry scrapped plans to deliver a speech before the vote laying out the U.S. vision for peace in the region. Kerry spoke with Netanyahu and with Egypt's foreign minister on Thursday, the White House said.
2016-12-23 00:00:00
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