President Obama’s foreign policy advisers brushed off President-elect Trump’s opposition to the United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction Friday, reminding him that he hasn’t taken office yet.
“On the president-elect, the first thing I would just say is that there’s one president at a time,” White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters after the U.N. vote. “President Obama is the president of the United States until Jan. 20 and we are taking this action, of course, as U.S. policy.”
Trump has annoyed the Obama team by tweeting out his policy views throughout the transition period, but he played an especially prominent role in the last-minute debates over the U.N. resolution. Egyptian diplomats initially offered the resolution for a vote on Thursday, but postponed it following public lobbying from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It passed Friday, with the United States abstaining.
“As to the U.N., things will be different after Jan. 20th,” Trump tweeted shortly after the vote.
House Speaker Paul Ryan also condemned the abstention. “This is absolutely shameful,” Ryan said. “Today’s vote is a blow to peace that sets a dangerous precedent for further diplomatic efforts to isolate and demonize Israel. Our unified Republican government will work to reverse the damage done by this administration, and rebuild our alliance with Israel.”
Rhodes dismissed the suggestion that Republican actions next year would be a reaction to the U.N. Security Council vote.
“It would be absurd to suggest that this action is in someway related at all to policy positions that the incoming administration has already said that they will pursue,” he said. “Before this resolution was even being discussed, the incoming administration had already announced their intention to move our embassy to Jerusalem and I think they sent a very clear message about what their approach to this issue was going to be through the person that they selected as their ambassador nominee,” referring to David Friedman, Trump’s chosen U.S. ambassador to Israel, who supports settlement construction.
Rhodes also faulted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for allowing the construction of settlements and “not taking different opportunities that were presented for a peace process,” although he hastened to add that “the Palestinians have missed plenty of opportunities” as well.
Rhodes noted that the resolution condemned Palestinian terrorism against Israelis, although not strongly enough to win a formal vote of support from the United States rather than an abstention vote.
“One of our great concerns is that the continued pace of settlement activity, which has accelerated in recent years — which has accelerated significantly since 2011, when we vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that condemned settlements — puts at risk the two-state solution, as does any continued [Palestinian] incitement to violence,” he said. “We’ve been very concerned that these accelerating trends are putting the very viability of the two-state solution at risk and in that context, we therefore thought that we have could not in good conscience veto a resolution that expressed concerns about the very trends that are eroding the foundation for a two-state solution.”
The abstention vote provoked strong criticism even from within Obama’s party.
“It is extremely frustrating, disappointing and confounding that the administration has failed to veto this resolution,” New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the incoming leader of the Senate Democrats, said after the resolution passed. “[I]ts actions will move us further from peace in the Middle East.”
But Rhodes argued that Netanyahu forced Obama’s hand. “While I understand and respect the different points of view on the issue, I would just suggest that we have a body of evidence to assess how this Israeli government has responded to us not taking this kind of action and that suggests that they will continue to accelerate the type of settlement construction that puts a two-state solution at risk,” he said.
