Indeed.
“Support for Israel” cannot mean uncritical support for any policy of any given Israeli government.
The United States has supported a two-state solution consistently since the '70s, and the settlements are a direct threat to a two-state solution. As has already been mentioned, a settlement freeze was the policy of Reagan, and of George Bush, and of George W. Bush. Were they not right-wing? Did they not “support Israel”, whatever that means to you?
Right, and letting in Mexicans and Muslims will destroy America as a white Christian state.
America does not define itself as a white Christian state. Israel defines itself as a Jewish state.
We apparently have some fairly left wing Israelis on this forum. Ask them if they support Arab right of return to Israel or whether that is a red line for them.
There are two distinct issues that are being conflated:
The issue of whether or not the settlements are an impediment to the peace process and a 2 state solution.
The issue of whether the UN is the proper place to work out that issue, or whether it should be up to 2 entities involved.
As the Obama administration said in 2011:
“While we agree with our fellow Council members—and indeed, with the wider world—about the folly and illegitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity, we think it unwise for this Council to attempt to resolve the core issues that divide Israelis and Palestinians.”
I’m not seeing what value the UNSC is bringing to the process.
A two-state solution, negotiated by both parties, outside the UN, has been US policy since, I believe, 1976. After 40 years of failure, I’m willing to look at other options.
Is there some reason to expect a positive breakthrough otherwise?
The resolution criticizing Israel for its tolerance of existing and expanding settlements is not an attempt at resolving the core issues that divide the Israelis and Palestinians. Only Israel has the power to stop expanding settlements and remove existing ones. Since the U.S. has not been successful in its occasional public statements and behind the scenes pressure in getting Israel to do so, perhaps the general Israeli public, if not their government, should see the world consensus on the issue and the Israeli government’s policies causing this isolation.
When other countries in the world defy international law and world consensus on issues - and they lack the power of the U.S. or a Security Council veto - not only do they face condemnations from the Security Council to isolate that country due to its behavior, but they also face sanctions to motivate the country to change its behavior. Unfortunately, even with the tensions between Obama and Netanyahu, Israel was never going to face sanctions. But it is clear that something must be done to not only get the general Israeli public to understand that they stand alone on this issue but that there must be some consequences for the Israeli government’s decision to tacitly condone and tolerate the settlements, let alone formally legalize them.
Do you think Israel is going to bend to the will of the UNSC? I don’t. I think it will have the opposite effect as intended.
So just so I’m fully clued up on this issue:
There is no justification for settlement building. I’ve asked several times in this thread, and many threads before, and no one has ever tried to give any justification (if you want to try to do so, please go ahead; but note the difference between a justification and a deflection).
Which means condemning the actions is right, but the UNSC is wrong to do that, because it will piss off the Israeli government and make them commit even worse acts.
Is this your argument?
The U.S. has the power to exert huge pressure on Israel. We are their largest trading partner, both for exports and for imports. We share strong military and intelligence ties with them. Israel receives more U.S. military aid than any other country. U.S. aid programs give, by far, more aid per capita to Israel and its “protectorates” than to any other country.
The U.S. gives very little to starving countries like Bangladesh. However, when aid provided by all the world’s donors countries is totaled (Europe and Japan give several times as much economic aid as the U.S.), Israel is still near the top on lists of recipients, due to U.S. generosity. Israel, a developed prosperous country, receives more total aid than Bangladesh, or the D.R. Congo, both huge poor countries.
And what does U.S. get in return? Campaign checks mailed by bloodthirsty Zionists to our overfed Congressmen?
The U.S. President should have called up “Bibi” long ago and said. “Please stop expanding the illegal settlements. I’m not even asking you to dismantle them yet, just stop expanding them. If you defy me … then next time you see me coming you’d better run!”
[septimus backs away, donning his asbestos suit in preparation for invective and casuistry.]
From this resolution alone? No, unless it motivates a post-Trump administration to exert pressure on Israel. Or if the next resolution has sanctions attached.
All I can tell you for certain is that the status quo hasn’t worked. 40 years is a long enough trial for my tastes.
Meaning what, they speed up the building of settlements?
Do you think “UN Resolution” is a new tactic?
Saying “X didn’t work, so let’s try Y” doesn’t make sense unless there is actually some reason to think that Y is going to work.
It’s the first UNSC resolution on settlements since 1979. So, it’s novel in that regard.
To be clear: I don’t think resolution 2334, by itself, will do much. It’s a stepping stone to actual progress (and/or Israel going full-on “rogue state”), and there’s no reason the UN can’t be part of that process. UN sanctions have been effective (though not every time) in the past, after all, and it’s not like settlements are universally supported by Israelis. Some pain from sanctions might be enough to make support for settlements political suicide.
Really, though, it’s the US that has the most influence here. We need to get off our proverbial asses and actually work on this two-state thing we’re allegedly trying to achieve.
What’s your plan?
Pretty much this. Israel has what it considers good reasons for pushing forth their settlement actions, and a non-binding resolution with no enforcement mechanism by the UN is unlikely to have the effect of stopping them from pursuing a policy they see as in their best interests. Whether they are right or not is a whole other question and I’m unsure of the answer. I guess it boils down to whether Israel believes that by stopping this would have some positive effect on the stability and peace in their immediate region or would have really any effect at all. A poster up thread suggested or asked whether Israel should just annex the West Bank. That ship has probably sailed. I think Israel COULD have done so in the past, but decided to refrain from doing so because it was a bargaining chip they could use down the road for peace. That doesn’t seem to have panned out and now it’s a big messy issue that I don’t see any easy resolution to. Stopping settlements at this point is unlikely to do much of anything, and it’s not politically viable for the Israel government to go back to the folks already settled their and tell them to pack up and leave. If there were an easy solution to this mess someone would have proposed it, but every option is politically impossible to one side or the other, so it just drags on.
Since the US is unlikely to drop support for Israel across the board (and since it would be kind of stupid for us to do so when they are one of our few solid allies in the region), I think that this was more symbolic than anything else. I can see why Obama did what he did (buff his legacy, basically), but I don’t see it having much of an actual impact. As we’ve seen a lot in the past few years, anything that is non-binding from the UN is written on sand. China is unlikely to stop building islands and attempting to assert control of the South or East China sea regions, Russia is unlikely to give back the Crimea or stop it’s back door attempt to annex the rest of the Ukraine, Syrian president Assad is unlikely to back down or abdicate, and GW Bush is unlikely to be dragged to the Haig for war crimes in Iraq, much to the fury of many US liberal types. 
Individual countries are, of course, free to impose sanctions or embargoes or other punitive measures against any of the above nations, including Israel, but a UN vote on this is pretty meaningless…and basically every nation knows it.
Sure, almost makes you wonder why Israel worked so hard for so many years over several decades to avoid this isolation - 30 previous resolutions worth of effort, in fact.
Not if one stops to actually give it some thought. Here’s a nice thought experiment for you. Who would care more about world opinion and the ramifications of UN censure…Israel, China or Russia? Got an answer? Now…can you explain why your choice would or has cared more? It’s a trick question, of course, but interested to see what your answer is and why you answered it however you did.
Outside of the Wild Wild West Cowboy mentatlity of certain segments of the American populace, the UN step are seen in the context of the lawful progression of actions - as in my legal system unlike the free to do anything employment framework of the USA, it is not legal to fire the long-term employees without going from the documentation of a warning to a sanction to the firing, much of the West that the US imagines it is the sole voice of, feel more comfortable in taking the step-wise actions.
So yes for the Americans who have not a culture of this, it is meaningless - but for a large segment of the West, these steps build the basis for the future actions and express the rising unacceptability - and for many countries are a basis for their indivudal actions - for the sanctions or for the other similar actions. So it is for the Crimea (otherwise normalised), and actions like banning the investment or the similar.
The resolution itself is not any great thing, but if were in fact meaningless the Israeli reaction would not be what it is - which is quite violent diplomatically. That is because they at least understand that the foundations for the non-USA developed world beginning to sanction it are being laid, which is not a good thing for the small open economy. The large continental economies can more readily ignore, but the small ones, not so readily. It is not a wise thing to be a dependency of one single great nation (a dependency masquarade as the ally that causes more problems than any objective advantages and requires constant heavy subsidies must if it is rational never mind its public declarations be sensitive to its political risk).
It would be better for the entire region, for the Israeli and for the Palestinian if there were a true centrist government, but we seem to be the new era of emotional blind-nationalism.
Ramira, the best would be for the SC to force a reasonable solution on the parties. There is no political capital for negotiation any more.
How? How would the SC force Israel (and Palestine for that matter) to the table and force a resolution on them? How would you get all of the UNSC members to do so…and how would you make it binding and how would you enforce whatever resolution on both parties? Would we invade the region (who would ‘we’ be?)? Permanent garrisons and firebases? No fly zones? Or would ‘we’ simply impose economic sanctions (against both?) if they refused?
File this under things likely to never happen, but the first step would be to recognize the Palestinian Authority as a soveriegn government and the pre-1967 borders (with the possible exception of Jerusalem) as the official borders between Israel and Palestine. I don’t think the PA would have too many problems with that. The thornier issue, apart from Israel’s acceptance, is how to deal with the split between Hamas and the PA. Israel seems to have concluded that so long as they are divided, it doesn’t have to take peace negotiations that seriously or do anything to resolve their part of the overall situation.
The lifeblood of Israel is trade. Without oil, they are particularly vulnerable to economic sanctions, particularly if the U.S. threatened to suspend or cancel key defense contracts and access. But again, this would require the U.S. to actually use its enormous leverage and go against the Israel lobby.