The United Nations Security Council issued a formal statement Monday morning in New York, denouncing Israel’s regulation of existing Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
The United States joined in the condemnation, the first time Israel’s “strongest ally” enabled the world body to take action against the Jewish State.
“The Security Council reiterates that continuing Israeli settlement activities are dangerously imperiling the viability of the two-state solution based on the 1967 lines,” the statement said. “The Security Council expresses deep concern and dismay with Israel’s announcement on February 12.”
The Netanyahu government granted retroactive authorization to nine existing Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria on February 12 in response to two deadly terrorist attacks in Jerusalem that killed children as well as adults. None of the communities are new, and the Netanyahu government acquiesced to a Biden Administration demand to freeze any other action on settlements.
“The UN Security Council has issued a one-sided statement which denies the rights of Jews to live in our historic homeland, fails to mention the Palestinian terror attacks in Jerusalem in which 10 Israeli civilians were murdered, ignores the Palestinian Authority’s grotesque pay-for-slay policy, which subsidizes the murder of Jews, and belittles the evil of antisemitism, which has resulted in the slaughter of millions,” the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said in a statement Monday evening.
“The statement should never have been made and the United States should never have joined it.”
Netanyahu said earlier in the day that although he agreed to freeze settlement activity in the “coming months,” he did not agree to cease demolitions of illegal structures built by Palestinian Authority Arabs in the Israeli-controlled Area C sections of Judea and Samaria.
A draft resolution that was to be advanced by the United Arab Emirates – a fellow member with Israel in the Abraham Accords – would have demanded Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory,” according to Reuters.
Such a resolution would have required nine votes in favor, and no vetoes from the five permanently Security Council members, including the United States.
