Outpost Bill 'Back On The Table' After UN Anti-Settlement Vote, Netanyahu Says Obama 'Ambushed' Israel At UN

Outpost bill 'back on the table' after UN anti-settlement vote

A controversial initiative to authorize West Bank outposts — previously postponed until after President-elect Donald Trump enters the White House on January 20 — is “back on the table” following the United States’s failure to veto a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements.

Fearing repercussions from the US administration, a final vote on the so-called Regulation Bill, which would legalize some 4,000 housing units in the West Bank built on privately owned Palestinian land, had been shelved until President Obama leaves office, coalition chairman David Bitan confirmed last week.

But with the US abstention in Friday’s Security Council vote, “We are done playing nice,” a coalition source told The Times of Israel Saturday night.

“It’s back on the table,” he said of the bill, signaling it could be brought to a plenary vote in the coming weeks.

Despite early support for the move, since the US election in November, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had instructed cabinet ministers and Knesset members to avoid actions that could affect the US-Israel relationship. On December 3, the prime minister doubled down, telling a faction meeting it was essential Israeli politicians “act with restraint,” and noting that it’s “a very sensitive period from a diplomatic perspective.”

In his first public appearance since the Security Council vote however, Netanyahu on Saturday took a very different tone, accusing President Barack Obama of breaching a specific commitment to Israel by allowing the anti-settlement resolution to pass.

Vowing not to be forced by international pressure into withdrawing from disputed territory, he said the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump had indicated that it would join an all-out war against what he termed a “shameful” and “scandalous” decision.

Netanyahu described the 14-0 vote in the Security Council, with the US abstaining, as “the swan song of the old world that is anti-Israel.” Now, he said, “we are entering a new era. And as President-elect Trump said, it’s going to happen a lot faster than people think.”

Netanyahu says Obama 'ambushed' Israel at UN, likens him to 'deeply hostile' Carter

PM claims president breached ‘specific commitment’ with Security Council abstention; ‘our friends’ in Trump team promising fight to cancel resolution; cuts funds to 5 UN groups

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday accused President Barack Obama of breaching a specific commitment to Israel by allowing through Friday’s UN Security Council anti-settlements resolution, and compared the outgoing president’s behavior to that of predecessor Jimmy Carter, “a president who was hostile to Israel.”

Vowing not to be forced by international pressure into withdrawing from disputed territory, he said the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump had indicated that it would join an all-out war against what he called a “shameful” and “scandalous” decision.

He described the 14-0 vote in the Security Council, with the US abstaining, as “the swan song of the old world that is anti-Israel.” Now, he said, “we are entering a new era. And as President-elect Trump said, it’s going to happen a lot faster than people think.”

Practically speaking, Netanyahu also announced that Israel was re-evaluating all of its dealings with the United Nations, and that he had already instructed officials to cut off “30 million shekels ($7.8 million) of funding for five UN bodies that are particularly hostile to Israel.” More such action will follow, he promised.

Netanyahu compared the resolution to the UN’s equation of Zionism with racism, and said that just as that decision was eventually overturned, so too would this one be. “It took time,” he said, “but it was cancelled.”

Speaking at a Hanukkah event for wounded soldiers and victims of terrorism (Hebrew clip below), Netanyahu said the UNSC decision was “biased and shameful, but we’ll get over it.” Israel, he stressed, “rejects it utterly.”

He said it was surreal in that it determined that the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and the Western Wall were occupied territory. “There is nothing more ridiculous than to call the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter occupied territory,” he said.

Furthermore, he said, the resolution represented an effort to impose the terms of a permanent Israeli-Palestinian accord. “It won’t work,” he said. The last person to attempt to do this, he said, was Carter — “a president deeply hostile to Israel,” and who recently said that Hamas is not a terrorist organization.” Carter’s efforts at the UN didn’t work either, he said

Carter, he noted, allowed through a similar UNSC decision, in 1980. All subsequent presidents stood by the commitment not to try to impose conditions at the UNSC, Netanyahu said — until Friday.

The US abstention came in “a complete contradiction” to a “specific commitment by President Obama in 2011,” he said. It was “a shameful anti-Israel ambush” by the administration, he said.

“The whole Middle East is going up in flames,” he said, “and the Obama administration and the Security Council” target Israel, the region’s only democracy. “How shameful.”

This is the straw that broke the camel’s back. Yesterday’s decision is a recruitment call to all our many friends in the US and around the world — friends who have had enough of the UN’s hostile treatment of Israel and who intend to push fundamental change at the UN.”