The United Nations Security Council rejected a resolution backed by Arab states that would have ordered Israel to withdraw within three years from territories it captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
The measure, introduced by Jordan, failed by a vote of 8-2 today, falling one short of the nine needed for a majority. The U.S. and Australia voted against the measure, while five nations on the 15-member council abstained.
The resolution, which Israel had condemned and the U.S. promised to veto, was a largely symbolic move by Arab states to strengthen Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who’s under domestic political pressure to fight for statehood after the U.S. effort to revive negotiations with Israel collapsed earlier this year.
It called for a negotiated peace deal within 12 months that would create two contiguous independent states based on the borders that existed before the 1967 war, modified by agreed-upon land swaps. Israel would have been required to withdraw from occupied territories by the end of 2017.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy to the UN, said the Palestinian leadership will meet today to consider its next steps.
“There is a global consensus on the two-state solution,” Mansour said at the UN session. “Why are we facing another Security Council failure as the situation unravels?”
The Palestinians have said if the resolution fails, then they would pursue their statehood campaign by joining some of the hundreds of international organizations and treaties that opened to them after the UN General Assembly recognized a state of Palestine in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in November 2012.
‘Provocations’ Boomerang
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, while retaining, along with Egypt, control of its borders. The territory is now controlled by Hamas, designated a terrorist group by the U.S., European Union and Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the Palestinian proposal’s defeat. Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said on his Facebook page that the resolution’s failure “should teach the Palestinians that provocations and attempts to impose unilateral measures on Israel won’t win them anything.”
U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power faulted the resolution as offering “unconstructive deadlines that take no account of Israel’s legitimate security concerns.”
While a peace deal is possible through negotiations, Power said, “This resolution sets the stage for more division, not for compromise.”
Palestinian Response
Secretary of State John Kerry called about 13 foreign leaders in the last two days urging the defeat of the resolution, said Jeff Rathke, a State Department spokesman.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said the vote “underlines once again the urgency of resuming meaningful negotiations.” Any renewed peace talks are effectively on hold at least until after Israel’s parliamentary elections in March.
In a text message from his office earlier this month, Netanyahu said Abbas “doesn’t understand that the result will be the Hamas takeover” of the West Bank.
Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, who voted for the resolution, said its failure risks leaving “a dangerous status quo which we can’t accept.”
France, China, Argentina, Chad, Chile, Jordan and Luxembourg also voted for the resolution. Lithuania, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Korea and the U.K. abstained.
To contact the reporter on this story: David Lerman in Washington at dlerman1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net Amy Teibel, Gwen Ackerman
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