Historic step: UNSC votes to end to Israeli settlements in Palestine

By Abdul Ruff

The process of establishing a soverign Palestine state is being supported by UN vote for defacto Palestine and the UN agencies doing all possible help for the Palestinians to move forward to get Palestine by legal means. Now a historic action by UNSC has legally binding Israel for the consequences of its illegal settlements in Palestine and asked Israel to remove all settlements illegal in Palatine- impediments for credible talks and for peace. UNSC can vote resolution only if no veto member disagrees on it and that has happened now. USA has abstained from voting in order to clear way for the resolution to sail through. Israel stand isolated legally, internationally.

Despite unusual diplomatic maneuvering involving President-elect Donald Trump, Israel, and Egypt on December 22, the United Nations Security Council passed a historic resolution on December 23 Friday demanding an end to Israeli settlements. As a positive step, the USA abstained, effectively allowing the measure to be approved- the first ever positive step b y the superpower in years ever since Israel was forced into Palestine and made a full UN member in 1948.

UN resolution that’s become such a controversial issue the last couple of days only asks Israel to adhere to international law. The draft resolution demands Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem”, and says the establishment of settlements by Israel has “no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law”.

Egypt withdrew the original resolution on 22 December afternoon, reportedly “under pressure” from both President Barack Obama and President elect Trump —who tweeted on the matter Thursday morning. —and Israel. Had this move worked, it could have punted the measure to the incoming Trump government, which is seen as more friendly to Israel than that of President Barack Obama—especially after Trump’s nomination last week of conservative Zionist hardliner David Friedman to serve as US ambassador to Israel. It was expected Trump would choose a pro-Palestine diplomat to be sent to Tel Aviv to bring about credible peace between Zionist terror victim Palestine and Israel, an arrogantly positioned and occupier of Palestinian territories with US backing. But the Security Council members New Zealand, Malaysia, Venezuela, and Senegal stepped in and the vote took place after all on Friday afternoon.

The US abstention, which was expected as the Obama government has given up pro-Israeli stance for the time being, was described as a relatively rare step by Washington, which usually uses it UN veto to shield Israel from such action, and as a parting shot by US President Obama who has had an acrimonious relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and who has made settlements a major target of peace efforts that have proven ultimately futile.” In response to the vote, pro-peace organization the Jewish Voice for Peace executive director Rebecca Vilkomerson declared: “There is an increasing understanding among US political leaders, thanks to ongoing grassroots pressure, of the need to hold Israel accountable to international law. The US abstention from this resolution is a welcome sign in that regard.”

However, she added, “with President-elect Trump urging a veto of even this mild resolution, as well as his nomination of an extreme right-wing Ambassador to Israel, we are deeply concerned by increasing US support for Israeli incitement, annexation, and control under his administration and will redouble our efforts to organize resistance to policies based in Islamophobia, racism, and disregard for even the most basic rights of Palestinians.”

Earlier, Trump wasn’t the only one who called on the USA to veto the measure; a number of hardcore Zionist US senators serving Israeli terror interests in Mideast on Friday joined him by issuing aggressive statements to that effect, making loud that the money they receive from Israel is worth the trouble. And interestingly Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who serves as chairman of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations of the Senate Appropriations Committee, threatened to reduce US to the United Nations” if the body moves forward with the ill-conceived resolution to upset Israeli straggly to expand illegal settlements in Palestine

Relations between Israel and Palestine have been wrecked for decades, as Palestinians have been seeking diplomatic recognition for their independent state of Palestine on the territories of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which is also partially occupied by Israel, and the Gaza Strip. Israel brutally occupies Palestine territories and attacks Gaza strips, now targeting women and children. UN is just watching the Zionist terror shows as Palestinians conti8neu to bleed and yet they are called the terrorists by leading US Zionists like Madam Clinton. Peace has not been the motto of Obama as he intensified the wars launched by roguish Bushdom leaders on the pretext of Sept-11 hoax. Ignoring intentional law stimulations, Israel brutally occupies Palestine territories with illegal Jewish settlements and attacks Gaza strips, now targeting women and children. UN is just watching the Zionist terror shows as Palestinians conti8neu to bleed and yet they are called the terrorists by leading US Zionists like Madam Clinton.

When Israel attacks Gaza Strip, killing even children or cancels the talks with Palestinians, USA admires and supports Israel mainly because US leaders do not seek peace or regional normalcy anywhere in the world, especially in energy rich West Asia. The most recent round of peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians was initiated by the United States in mid-2013 but ended in an impasse almost a year later. USA plays mischief in the name of diplomacy with Palestine and world. President Obama, like his predecessors had done before him, just could not push the arrogant Israeli regime to come to terms with reality and agree for peaceful resolution of the Mideast conflict that makes the world vulnerable to tensions and wars.

President elect Trump is expected to choose peace in order to wind down all terror wars. Hence his views on Palestine gains importance. Following the presidential poll, US President-elect Donald Trump assured the global community of the serious approach of USA in changing political atmosphere and said he wants to put an end to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and thereby bring to the Mideast region. “That’s the ultimate deal,” Trump said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, referring to the complex conflict as the “war that never ends.” Just one day after winning the election, Trump has asked hawkish Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to meet with him in the USA.

Trump noted that any deal should be directly negotiated between Israel and Palestine, but that his government would play a “significant role” in helping the parties to achieve a just, lasting peace,” according to the Times of Israel. In an interview with “Israel Today”, a free daily owned by Republican super-donor Sheldon Adelson, Trump said he believed his government can play “a significant role” in helping the Middle East parties reach an agreement. Netanyahu, however, had ordered his Cabinet and lawmakers to avoid speaking to the media about the election while the incoming US administration formulates its policies and told his Cabinet on November 13, 2016 that he would soon be meeting Trump.

A senior Israeli Cabinet Minister Naftali Bennett on November 14, 2016 said the election of Donald Trump has helped create an opportunity for Israel to abandon its stated commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian state. The remarks by Bennett reflect sentiment in the nationalist Israeli right wing that Trump’s election many Zionists believe could usher in a new era of relations with the United States. While these two capitalist countries are close allies, relations were sometimes tense between US President Barack Obama and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu because of their vastly different world views.

Bennett last week welcomed Trump’s election, predicting that “the special relationship” with the US would grow stronger and noting that the Republican campaign platform had no mention of a Palestinian state. In fact many in USA and Israel are happy that Trump has chosen a hard core Zionist as US envoy for fascist Israel. They believe for Trump “The era of a Palestinian state is over”. Bennett leads the Jewish Home party, a coalition partner that is affiliated with the West Bank settler movement. He is one of the most influential voices in Israeli politics, and both his party and most members of Netanyahu’s Likud oppose Palestinian statehood on either religious or security grounds. Bennett has called for annexing parts of the West Bank and granting the Palestinians in other parts expanded autonomy, with new roads, office parks and economic opportunities, with Israel retaining overall security control.

Israel and its media kept themselves away from Is US elections, not siding with Trump. . Speaking to foreign reporters on November 14, 2016, Bennett was more cautious, citing an order by Netanyahu for his Cabinet not to talk about the election in public. But he made it clear that Trump will push his government to rethink its commitment to Palestinian independence. Bennett said that the combination of the changes in the USA, in Europe that the region provides Israel with a unique opportunity to reset and rethink everything. “It’s no secret that I think that the notion of setting up a Palestine in the heart of Israel is a profound mistake. I believe that we have to bring alternative new ideas instead of the Palestinian state approach”.

Now the Cabinet Minister Ofir Akunis, a close Netanyahu associate, called for a renewed wave of settlement construction. But such sentiments may have been premature. This explains the Zionist petrified mindset with regard to Palestine state and Palestinians. For two decades, the international community has been pushing for a negotiated peace deal that would include the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip – areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Though Bennett said he did not know whether Trump would support that view, he said it is critical that Israel now clearly define its own vision. After many years, the Israeli government has to decide what we want”. Bennett’s comments were also an indicator of the pressure Netanyahu could soon face to abandon his commitment to the “two-state solution” favored by President Obama, President elect Trump and the international community.

The thinking was that Israel’s continued occupation of millions of Palestinians would create a demographic time bomb, threatening Israel’s status as a democracy with a Jewish majority. After opposing Palestinian independence for most of his career, Netanyahu, like his predecessors had done, reluctantly endorsed the idea shortly after Obama took office in 2009. Critics, including Obama, have said that continued Israeli settlements on occupied territories have undercut the goal, and the Obama government has at times questioned Netanyahu’s commitment to seeking peace.

Though never supported Trump’s campaign, Israeli hard-liners welcomed Trump’s election late, noting the support for Israel in his campaign platform and the many pro-Israel officials who advised him during his campaign. Their spirits were further boosted after a Trump adviser, Jason Greenblatt, told an Israeli radio station that his boss does not think the West Bank settlements are an “obstacle to peace.” But that is now history.

Trump’s unpredictability has raised concerns that he might change his attitudes once in office. For instance, Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he would like to help broker a solution to the conflict “for humanity’s sake”.

All sensible people and powers around the globe hope that the Trump regime will not give vent to his unexplainable hatred for Muslims in depriving the Palestinian people – who have been driven forcefully away by USA-UK-Jewish people from their motherland more than seven decades back in 1948 to carve out an illegal and fascist Israel – in realising their genuine rights of a free Palestine state.

UNSC vote to end to Israeli settlements in Palestine is indeed a historic step to further easy the movement for establishing Palestine as a full UN member sooner than later. .