Secretary of State John Kerry’s team did not oppose debating a United Nations Security Council resolution about Israeli settlements in the United Nations Security Council, according to a spokesman who declined to say how the United States would have voted.
“I think we were interested to see how the debate and discussion would unfold, and I think I’d leave it at that,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
Egyptian diplomats circulated a draft resolution for the United Nations on Wednesday evening that would have called for an end to Israeli settlement construction in disputed Palestinian territory. The United States, traditionally, has cast votes to veto such resolutions in years past, but growing criticism of the settlements from the Obama administration caused Israel and congressional leaders to worry that President Obama might be planning a parting change in policy before leaving office.
“What we’ve continued to try to do was work towards seeing a viable, two-state solution realized,” Kirby said.
Egypt asked for a delay in the vote after intense lobbying from Israel and public condemnation from President-elect Trump. “The resolution being considered at the United Nations Security Council regarding Israel should be vetoed,” Trump said.
Kirby refused to say if the United States would have vetoed, supported, or abstained from voting on the Egyptian resolution, but Kerry made clear recently that he believes Israeli leaders are making a potentially fatal mistake for the future of peace talks by allowing the settlements to continue.
“The left in Israel is telling everybody they are a barrier to peace, and the right that supports it openly supports it because they don’t want peace,” Kerry said Dec. 4. “And more than 50 percent of the ministers in the current government have publicly stated they are opposed to a Palestinian state and there will be no Palestinian state. So this is the predicament. This is where we find ourselves.”
Kerry had intended to give a speech on the future of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks after the vote, but scrapped that plan when the Egyptians withdrew. “He decided that in light of the postponement of the vote that it would be prudent for him to postpone his remarks as well,” Kirby said.
