Lapid: US veto at Security Council no longer assured
Finance minister says Israel-US ties at ‘unprecedented low’ ahead of expected Palestinian demand for UN resolution calling for Israeli pullout to 1967 borders
By Times of Israel staff November 29, 2014, 1:58 pm
Finance Minister Yair Lapid said Saturday that ties between Israel and the US have reached such a nadir that the US’s assistance at the UN Security Council — using its right to veto anti-Israel resolutions — was no longer assured.
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“We are at an unprecedented low point in our ties with the US. No one knows what they will do when Abu Mazen [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] goes to the Security Council. Their veto is not assured like before,” Lapid said at a gathering in Tel Aviv.
The Palestinians have yet to formally submit to the UN Security Council a UN draft resolution calling for an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders by 2016, but are expected to do so in the coming weeks.
Despite Palestinian statements that the text would come up for a vote in November, Palestinian representative Riyad Mansour told AFP this week that no date had been set for the draft to be discussed at the 14-member council.
On Monday, UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged Israel and the Palestinians to “step back from the brink” and return to peace talks amid European moves toward recognizing Palestine.
His comments reflected international alarm over the spate of terrorist attacks in Israel by Palestinians and East Jerusalem residents, the tensions over the Temple Mount, and the deadlock over peace talks which ended in late April.
With no political solution in sight, governments and parliaments in Europe are moving toward Palestinian recognition, with France’s National Assembly set to vote on non-binding resolution on Friday followed by a vote on December 2.
That follows Sweden’s announcement that it will recognize Palestine and non-binding votes in the British and Spanish parliament in favor of recognizing Palestinian statehood.
The Netanyahu-led Israeli government and the Obama administration have often gone head to head, sometimes publicly over a variety of issues, including disagreements over the ongoing talks with Iran on its nuclear program, continued Israeli settlement activity and perceived Israeli intransigence on peace talks.
Some of the differences have deteriorated into exchanges of name-calling between officials, reports of snubbing and other uncommon behavior between allies: From anonymous Israeli government accusations over the summer that Secretary of State John Kerry was engaging in a ”terrorist” attack on Israel by backing a cease-fire agreement with Hamas that had been shaped by its Qatari backers; to Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon calling Kerry “obsessive” and “messianic” on the peace process; to Netanyahu’s lecturing US TV audiences on how un-American it was for the Obama administration to oppose Israeli building in eastern Jerusalem; to an anonymous Obama administration official telling journalist Jeffrey Goldberg that Netanyahu’s behavior on the peace process and on Iran was “chickenshit.”
Kerry later called Netanyahu to apologize on behalf of the US government for the remark.
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