Trump, Netanyahu urge Obama to veto U.N. resolution on settlements

A boy sits near an Israeli flag atop the roof of a vehicle at the entrance to the Jewish settler outpost of Amona in the West Bank

By Jeffrey Heller and Michelle Nichols

JERUSALEM/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump echoed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in urging the Obama administration on Thursday to veto a U.N. Security Council draft resolution that calls for an immediate halt to settlement building on occupied land Palestinians seek for a state.

Netanyahu took to Twitter in the dead of night in Israel to make the appeal, in a sign of concern that President Barack Obama might take a parting shot at a policy he has long opposed and at a right-wing Israeli leader with whom he has had a rocky relationship.

Hours later, Trump, posting on Twitter and Facebook, backed fellow conservative Netanyahu on one of the most contentious issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the pursuit – effectively stalled since 2014 – of a two-state solution.

“The resolution being considered at the United Nations Security Council regarding Israel should be vetoed,” Trump said.

“As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations between the parties, and not through the imposition of terms by the United Nations.

“This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis,” he wrote.

After Trump’s statement, a U.S. administration official said: “We have no comment at this time.”

Egypt circulated the draft on Wednesday evening and the 15-member council is due to vote at 3 p.m. ET (2000 GMT) on Thursday, diplomats said. It was unclear, they said, how the United States, which has protected Israel from U.N. action, would vote.

The resolution would demand Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem”.

The White House declined to comment. Some diplomats hope Obama will allow Security Council action by abstaining on the vote.

Israel’s security cabinet was due to hold a special session at 1500 GMT to discuss the issue. Israeli officials voiced concern that passage of the resolution would embolden the Palestinians to seek international sanctions against Israel.

In Beirut, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told reporters that Paris was looking at the text of the resolution with great interest.

“The continuation of settlements is completely weakening the situation on the ground and creating a lot of tension,” he said. “It is taking away the prospect of a two-state solution. So this could reaffirm our disagreement with this policy.”

OBAMA CRITICAL OF SETTLEMENTS

Obama’s administration has been highly critical of settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. U.S. officials said this month, however, the president was not expected to make major moves on Israeli-Palestinian peace before leaving office.

Tweeting at 3:28 a.m., Netanyahu said the United States “should veto the anti-Israel resolution at the U.N. Security Council on Thursday”.

Israel’s far-right and settler leaders have been buoyed by the election of Trump, the Republican presidential candidate. He has already signaled a possible change in U.S. policy by appointing one his lawyers – a fundraiser for a major Israeli settlement – as Washington’s new ambassador to Israel.

Netanyahu, for whom settlers are a key component of his electoral base, has said his right-wing government has been their greatest ally since the capture of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in a 1967 war.

Some legislators in his right-wing Likud party have already suggested Israel declare sovereignty over the West Bank if the United States does not veto the resolution.

That prospect seemed unlikely, but Netanyahu could opt to step up building in settlements as a sign of defiance of Obama and support for settlers.

Israel considers all of Jerusalem its capital, a claim that is not recognized internationally.

In 2011, the United States vetoed a draft resolution condemning Israeli settlements after the Palestinians refused a compromise offer from Washington.

Israel’s U.N. ambassador Danny Danon said on Israeli Army Radio: “In a few hours we will receive the answer from our American friends.”

“I hope very much it will be the same one we received in 2011 when the version was very similar to the one proposed now and the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. at the time, Susan Rice, vetoed it.”

The draft text says the establishment of settlements by Israel has “no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law”.

It expresses grave concern that continuing settlement activities “are dangerously imperilling the viability of a two-state solution”.

The United States says continued Israeli settlement building lacks legitimacy, but has stopped short of adopting the position of many countries that it is illegal under international law. Some 570,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Russia, Britain or China to be adopted.

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington and John Irish travelling with French foreign minister; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Netanyahu says willing to discuss Arab initiative for peace

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu enters to a media conference together with Israel's new Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, head of far-right Yisrael Beitenu party, following Lieberman's swearing-in ceremony at the Knesset, the Israeli parlia

By Ori Lewis

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held out the prospect on Monday of reviving a 2002 Arab peace initiative that offers Israel diplomatic recognition from Arab countries in return for a statehood deal with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu’s comments were a formal response to a speech last week by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who promised Israel warmer ties if it accepted efforts to resume peace talks.

“The Arab peace initiative includes positive elements that can help revive constructive negotiations with the Palestinians,” Netanyahu said, echoing comments he made a year ago to Israeli reporters.

“We are willing to negotiate with the Arab states revisions to that initiative so that it reflects the dramatic changes in the region since 2002 but maintains the agreed goal of two states for two peoples,” he added.

His comments were made also in English in a speech that was mostly in Hebrew – a device Netanyahu often uses when he wants to make a statement to the international community.

Netanyahu spoke moments after ultra nationalist Avigdor Lieberman was sworn in as Israel’s new defense minister and Israel’s fragile right-wing coalition gained vital support in parliament.

Lieberman concurred and Netanyahu appeared to indicate that the new far-right defense minister’s inclusion in the government did not spell an end to peace efforts with the Palestinians.

The original Arab plan offered full recognition of Israel but only if it gave up all land seized in the 1967 Middle East war and agreed to a “just solution” for Palestinian refugees.

But in 2013, after the initiative’s terms were softened to include possible land swaps between Israel and the Palestinians, Netanyahu signaled a readiness to consider it.

Previous attempts to engage the adversaries have come to nought. The Palestinians say Israeli settlement expansion denies them a viable state they seek in the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip and a capital in Arab East Jerusalem.

Israel has demanded tighter security measures from the Palestinians and a crackdown on militants who have attacked or threaten the safety of Israeli citizens.

In the last half year, Palestinian attacks have killed 28 Israelis and two visiting U.S. citizens. Israeli forces have shot dead at least 195 Palestinians, 134 of whom Israel has said were assailants. Others were killed in clashes and protests.

France is set to host a peace conference of to revive peace efforts on June 3 with the participation of ministers from the Middle East Quartet – the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations – the Arab League, the U.N. Security Council and about 20 countries.

Neither Israel, which has opposed the gathering, nor the Palestinians, who have welcomed it, have been invited.

(Additional reporting by Jeffrey Heller, writing by Ori Lewis)

Bus Bomb in Jerusalem wounds 16

Flames rise at the scene where an explosion tore through a bus in Jerusalem

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A bomb blew up a bus and set fire to another in Jerusalem on Monday, wounding 16 people in an attack that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu linked to a six-month-old wave of Palestinian street violence.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility from any Palestinian factions for the blast. Israeli officials declined to assign direct blame.

They said two of the casualties had not yet been identified and may have been bombers.

Suicide bombings on Israeli buses were a hallmark of the Palestinian revolt of 2000-2005 but have been rare since. With Palestinians carrying out less organized stabbing, car-ramming and gun attacks since October, Israel has been braced for an escalation.

“We will settle accounts with these terrorists,” Netanyahu said in a speech, referring to whoever executed the bus attack.

“We are in a protracted struggle against terror – knife terror, shooting terror, bomb terror and also tunnel terror,” he added, speaking hours after Israel announced its discovery of an underground passage dug by Hamas militants from Gaza.

Police initially said they were looking at the possibility that a technical malfunction caused the fire that consumed two buses on Derech Hebron road, in an area of southwest Jerusalem close to the boundary with the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

But based on the wounds and other findings, authorities concluded that a small and possibly rudimentary explosive device was set off at the back of one of the buses.

Those details recalled the bombing of a Tel Aviv bus by an Israeli Arab during the 2012 Gaza war which caused injuries but no deaths.

In the last half year, Palestinian attacks have killed 28 Israelis and two visiting U.S. citizens. Israeli forces have killed at least 191 Palestinians, 130 of whom Israel says were assailants. Many others were shot dead in clashes and protests.

Drivers behind the bloodshed include Palestinian bitterness over stalled statehood negotiations and the growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, stepped up Jewish access to a disputed Jerusalem shrine, and Islamist-led calls for Israel’s destruction.

Bombings have not been carried out during this period – though Israeli prosecutors said a Palestinian woman who tried to blow up a gas balloon in her car after being pulled over by police in October was a would-be suicide bomber.

(Writing by Dan Williams, Editing by Angus MacSwan)