On Dec. 21, amid his morning workout, an afternoon turn of golf and a family cooking with friends, President Obama interrupted his Hawaii vacation to deliberate by phone with his tip inhabitant confidence group in Washington. Egypt had introduced a fortitude during a U.N. Security Council condemning Israeli settlements as illegal, and a opinion was scheduled for a subsequent day.
The thought had been present during a legislature for months, though a sudden timing was a surprise. Obama was open to abstaining, he pronounced on a call, supposing a magnitude was “balanced” in a defamation of terrorism and Palestinian assault and there were no last-minute changes in a text.
Skeptics, including Vice President Biden, warned of extreme recoil in Congress and in Israel itself. But many concluded that a time had come to take a stand. The fast boost of Israeli settlements in a West Bank and East Jerusalem, notwithstanding sharpening U.S. criticism, could really good tighten a doorway to any wish of negotiating corresponding Israeli and Palestinian states. Pending Israeli legislation would retroactively legalize settlements already assembled on Palestinian land.
The resolution’s sponsors, 4 countries in further to Egypt, were dynamic to call a opinion before Obama left office. A U.S. halt would not usually indicate capitulation of Israeli actions though also expected take Israel off a offshoot for during slightest a subsequent 4 years during President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.
“People debated either a recoil to a vote, if we abstained, would do some-more mistreat than good, that it would resonate into a politics, into Israeli politics, and would accelerate trends,” a comparison administration central said. But “every intensity evidence about creation things worse is already happening.”
[Kerry cruelly condemns Israeli settler activity as an barrier to peace]
Israel had been a third rail of U.S. domestic discuss for decades, though Obama, aides noted, never had to run for bureau again. He had zero to lose.
When a opinion finally came dual days later, all though one of a Security Council’s 15 members, including Russia, China and a United States’ closest European allies, authorized it. U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power, who had only viewed a go-ahead from Obama, around a call from White House inhabitant confidence confidant Susan E. Rice, lifted her palm high in abstention. The fortitude was approved.
Reaction was as predicted. Members of Congress charged that Obama had undercut one of a United States’ closest allies. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a magnitude “absurd,” and his supervision pronounced a United States had personally “colluded” with a Palestinians on a fortitude — a assign Obama aides heatedly denied.
Trump, who had publicly urged a veto, tweeted for Israel to “stay strong” until his inauguration. Trump clearly skeleton a pointy change of march in U.S. policy. Chief Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon and others tighten to a president-elect have grown increasingly unfortunate with administration comments in new weeks, generally on Israel. Bannon and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are heading a president-elect’s efforts on a Israel discuss during a transition, fielding calls from Israeli officials and allies, and arranging meetings, according to several people informed with a inner setup.
Asked by reporters Wednesday either he thinks a United States should leave a United Nations, Trump pronounced that as enlarged as a general physique is “solving problems” rather than causing them, “if it lives adult to a potential, it’s a good thing. If it doesn’t, it’s a rubbish of time.”
[Read a twin of John Kerry’s debate on a U.N abstention]
But for a moment, during least, according to comparison Obama administration officials who discussed a highway to a president’s preference on a condition of anonymity, a administration takes some compensation in that a emanate of settlements and a viewed risk they poise to an contingent Israeli-Palestinian assent understanding is behind on a general agenda.
The initial open spirit of a pierce came in a feverishness of a U.S. presidential debate in September, only after nominees Trump and Hillary Clinton hold meetings with Netanyahu in New York. In an Israeli radio interview, Dan Shapiro, U.S. envoy to Israel, pronounced Obama was “asking himself” about a best approach to foster a two-state fortitude to a Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“This could be a matter we make or a fortitude or an beginning during a U.N. . . . that contributes to an bid to be continued by a subsequent administration,” he said.
Shapiro clearly expected a Clinton victory, reflecting meditative within a administration that if Obama took a feverishness for a vicious matter or resolution, she would be in a improved position to play a “good cop” and pierce Israel toward concrete negotiations. For her part, Clinton had voiced no seductiveness in a resolution.
The United States had enlarged declined to join many of a rest of a universe in defining as “illegal” a building of Israeli housing in a West Bank and majority-Palestinian East Jerusalem. The final preference on who had a rights to what land was to be negotiated, according to decades of general agreements by Israelis and Palestinians.
During his 8 years in office, Obama had attempted to kick-start approach Israeli-Palestinian talks over a “final status” accord, including with scarcely dual years of complete negotiations by Secretary of State John F. Kerry. Throughout that time, a administration had avoided Security Council movement on a issue, persuading sponsors to repel intensity resolutions before a vote.
The Palestinians were always lobbying for a vote, nonetheless a administration deliberate many of a due resolutions too one-sided. At a same time, a administration’s meditative was that there was no indicate in preempting talks if there were still a picturesque possibility of removing a parties behind to a table.
But with settlements fast expanding, and comparison officials in Netanyahu’s worried bloc observant a two-state fortitude was effectively dead, other Security Council members were agitating for a new resolution, and a administration was listening.
So was Netanyahu’s government, that picked adult immediately on Shapiro’s comments.
Trump’s Nov. 8 feat increasing Israeli regard of a preemptive pierce by Obama, along with integrity by other U.N. members to list a fortitude before a new U.S. administration took office.
The Palestinians and Egypt — that now binds a rotating Arab chair on a Security Council — had been articulate adult a new fortitude on settlements given a summer. At a same time, New Zealand, that had funded a prior magnitude during a United States’ request, had created a new draft.
Both versions began to disseminate in early December. The United States, in discussions with New Zealand and indirectly with Egypt, insisted it would not even cruise a matter unless a resolutions were some-more offset to simulate critique of Palestinian assault along with defamation of Israeli settlements, according to U.S. officials.
The officials definitely denied Israeli allegations this week that a United States personally pushed a resolutions. An Egyptian journal news alleging that Rice and Kerry met in early Dec with Palestinian adjudicator Saeb Erekat and a conduct of Palestinian comprehension to tract a fortitude was false, officials said. While Kerry and Rice met alone with Erekat during a revisit here, they said, there was no comprehension central and no contention of a resolution.
The officials also denied that Biden, in dual mid-December calls to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, had urged a “yes” opinion in a council. Biden, who handles a Ukraine comment for a White House, calls Poroshenko several times a month, and those times were ancillary a due nationalization of a hurtful bank.
The Egyptian draft, tweaked with assistance from Britain, was submitted to a legislature on Dec. 21. As mostly happens when competing and overlapping resolutions circulate, New Zealand and co-sponsors Malaysia, Senegal and Venezuela motionless to dump their chronicle and support a scarcely matching Egyptian fortitude in sequence to cut brief enlarged negotiations and pull for a vote.
“The United States did not breeze or emanate this resolution. Nor did we put it forward,” Kerry pronounced in a debate Wednesday. “It was drafted by Egypt . . . that is one of Israel’s closest friends in a region, in coordination with a Palestinians and others.”
The final content was delicately drawn to use identical, or near-identical, denunciation to resolutions dating to a 1970s on Israel and a Palestinians that a United States had formerly approved.
“We wanted to see Security Council action,” pronounced a diplomat from one of a sponsors. “We wanted a general village to reaffirm a two-state solution.”
“We wanted to do it; it’s a really critical emanate for us,” pronounced another diplomat, who pronounced there had been “no conversation” with a United States about a subject. “I didn’t see a U.S. play any purpose during all.”
In a meantime, however, Egypt came underneath pointy vigour from Israel — that frequently supports U.S. troops assist to Cairo — and from Trump, who called Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi. Arab unfamiliar ministers convened a Thursday assembly in Cairo, and by midday, Egypt had cold a resolution. A scheduled 3 p.m. opinion was canceled.
Under Security Council rules, co-sponsors can still put a fortitude forward, that is what New Zealand and a others did Friday, when a legislature reconvened for a vote.
At a time, according to several diplomats, few — if any — knew how a United States would vote.
Carol Morello and Robert Costa contributed to this report.