Sanity prevails.
The U.S. today vetoed a draft resolution in the United Nations Security Council that would have declared Israel’s settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to be illegal and demanded a halt to such activity.
U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice sought until the final hours before the vote to reach agreement with Palestinian and Arab diplomats on a compromise statement that would have increased pressure on Israel to cease settlement construction, while stopping short of calling it illegal or demanding a moratorium.
Rice was alone in opposing the measure on the 15-member council, the UN’s principal policy making panel. It was the Obama administration’s first veto of a UN resolution and marked the 10th time in the past 11 years that the U.S. has voted against a text considered to be critical of Israel.
In the meantime, the Middle East is burning.
As protesters attempted to converge on Pearl Roundabout, a landmark in the capital Manama that has become the principal rallying point of the uprising, soldiers stationed in a nearby skyscraper opened fire.
Since they took to the streets, Bahrain’s protesters have come to expect violence and even death at the hands of the kingdom’s security forces. At least five people were killed before yesterday’s protests.
But this was on a different scale of magnitude.
As they drew near, they were met first with tear gas and then with bursts of live ammunition.
Clearly, if only the UN had passed the anti-Israel resolution, all would be well with Bahrain.
Why is Abbas so set on this resolution? So he can keep on doing what he’s been doing—not conduct peace negotiations with Israel. If the Obama administration truly cared about peace, they’d treat Abbas as badly as they treated Netanyahu. They’d scold him and publicly humiliate him and force him to come to the table. But that’s not the narrative. No. The narrative is that it is Israel that is intransigent.