“This is a precedent-setting admission to the whole world that the Israel Lobby controls the United States administration, and that President Obama is being forced by Israel to do things he doesn’t want to do.”–Jeff Goodall
After hesitating until the very last moment, U.S. President Barack Obama decided to have his envoy veto the UN Security Council resolution condemning the settlements. The Palestinian-initiated proposal would have declared the Israeli settlement enterprise in the territories illegal. Fourteen members of the Security Council voted in favor of the resolution, and only the U.S. veto kept it from being passed.
The Palestinians lost the vote, but achieved their goal: They exposed for all to see the international isolation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration and embarrassed the U.S. administration by revealing it as two-faced.
In explaining the veto decision, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, denounced the “illegitimacy” of the settlements and stressed that Obama agreed with the resolution’s sponsors but had to oppose it for political reasons.