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With New Resolution, the UN Drives Stake into Israeli-Palestinian Peace Hopes

(Newsweek) Michael Oren - The UN Security Council resolution denouncing Israel's presence in territories it captured in 1967 poses untold dangers not only to Israel but to the Palestinians themselves, and greatly diminishes the chances for peace. The resolution means the Western Wall and other places sacred to Jews for 3,000 years are considered as illegally occupied. It labels 600,000 Israelis as "flagrant violators of international law." The goal of the initiators of the resolution was not to achieve a better two-state solution, but to deny Israel the right to defend itself and, ultimately, the right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state. Israel will survive this legal onslaught and continue to thrive. The Palestinians, by contrast, will remain stateless. A strong Israel is virtually all that stands between the Sunni Arab states and the radical jihadists in Iran and ISIS. The Security Council vote will undoubtedly reinforce those radicals and embolden them to mount further attacks not only against the Jewish State but also against its Arab neighbors. And the long-tormented peoples of the Middle East will receive an unequivocal message from the UN: the massacre of more than half a million Arabs in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen is unimportant. All that matters is Jews living and praying in their homeland. Finally, the resolution impairs American credibility, casting doubts on the reliability of American commitments. By abstaining on the resolution, and in effect abandoning its only democratic Middle Eastern ally, the U.S. has called into question its dependability to its other friends. No American ally should rest easily. The writer, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., is deputy minister for diplomacy in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office.
2016-12-29 00:00:00
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