By George Barron | Contributing sources: The AP and Todd Beamon of NewsMax
Friday President-elect Donald Trump criticized the United Nations Security Council’s vote to condemn Israel for building and keeping settlements in the West Bank. He pledged that “things will be different” after he is officially inaugurated on January 20th.
Trump said on his FaceBook page and also tweeted portions of the following:
As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and the 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.”
In what would be considered an unusual move, The United States abstained from the 14-0 vote by the Security Council, which called Israel’s settlements and continuing construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem a “flagrant violation’ of international law.” Mr. Trump has previously sided with Israel on the matter as well as calling for Jerusalem to become the capital of Israel.
The United States has historically cast a veto to support Israel on council resolutions that unfairly ruled against Israel concerning the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had publicly urged the U.S. to veto the resolution, calling it bad for peace. Frustrated about Obama’s apparent disregard for Israel’s position, it was reported that Mr. Netanyahu approached President-elect Trump to see if he could persuade Obama to call for a veto the security council vote.
Israel “implored the White House not to go ahead and told them that if they did, we would have no choice but to reach out to President-elect Trump,” an Israeli diplomatic official told CNN.
Trump’s tweet marked an unprecedented intervention by a president-elect in the diplomatic affairs of a sitting commander-in-chief — sparking widespread accusations that he was trying to undermine Obama’s position.
The AP and Newsmax contributed to this article