It is difficult to reconcile President Obama’s enabling the passage last week of the UN’s virulently anti-settlements resolution with anything remotely resembling traditional notions of statecraft, especially as practiced in a democracy.
Resolution 2334 contains several sharp departures from almost a half-century of US policy regarding the UN, the Middle East, and America’s most important ally in that part of the world, unnecessarily exposing that ally to extraordinary dangers that it cannot be expected to leave unaddressed.
And the decision by Mr. Obama to withhold his Security Council veto came just weeks before the end of his presidency and after President-elect Trump declared in no uncertain terms that he plans a tectonic shift in terms of the U.S.-Israel relationship. Plainly, the president could not have thought that what the resolution calls for would be anything but wholly inconsistent with what U.S. policy will be for the foreseeable future.
Even more bewildering is that the resolution reflects a view of the conflict that is materially at odds even with recent statements from the Obama administration itself. For example, the resolution casts Israel as an interloper in most of the West Bank and Jerusalem – areas occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967. Yet President Obama has often stated that borders cannot be imposed on the parties by others.
Notwithstanding claims by administration officials that the resolution only relates to future settlements, it plainly puts the legality of any Israeli presence in Jerusalem or the West Bank into question – no such issue is raised with respect to Palestinian residents – when the administration had long maintained that all such questions were properly to be answered through direct negotiations between the two sides.
And could Mr. Obama possibly have thought the resolution would give the Palestinians any incentive to proceed to negotiations? Surely he knows that resolutions such as 2334 will only serve to assure the Palestinians that their recalcitrance will continue to be rewarded.
The resolution effectively blames Israel’s settlement building for the lack of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, but Secretary of State John Kerry, for one, has long lamented the fact that the Palestinians will not negotiate unconditionally but demand concessions as a condition for negotiations.
And while President Obama has long opposed the BDS movement, this resolution, with its declaration of illegality, will be seized upon by those supporting the BDS narrative.
And then of course there’s the administration’s decision to forgo a veto in the face of overwhelming sentiment in the Senate and House of Representatives. Only a scant few in Congress chose not to sharply criticize the president in the wake of the U.S. abstention. Not only did Mr. Obama arbitrarily reverse years of precedent followed by his own administration, he also stood virtually alone among elected federal officials in his stand on the resolution.
The president may have thought the U.S. abstention would advance the cause of peace, but we think opposite will be proven true. Israel has emerged as a major and military power in the Middle East and it is already projecting its economic, scientific, and technical strengths around the world. As a result, it is on the cusp of major political breakthroughs in Africa and South America. To be sure, Resolution 2334 presents challenges, and in the short run, possibly serious ones. But Israel seems up to taking the measures necessary to defend its interests, and those will not necessarily please the Palestinians.
Throughout his years in office, Mr. Obama seemed to regard Israel like an annoying mosquito – of little consequence in the real world but something to which attention had to be paid. He must have been taken aback when Israel reacted to the passage of the resolution by cutting its aid to the sponsors and recalling its ambassadors; in other words, it acted like the big boys do.
Ultimately, given the new era in U.S.-Israel relations widely anticipated with a Trump administration in place, we suspect the resolution will become just a footnote in the history of an irrelevant international organization comprised mostly of fast failing self-important nation-states.
So why did Barack Obama stand behind Resolution 2334, a move that seems which seems counter- intuitive at best? The president, it must be acknowledged, often showed sparks of insight and vision. But when push came to shove, he cast aside his responsibilities like the thin-skinned, opportunistic Chicago political hack he’s always been.