President-elect Trump urged the United States on Thursday to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution to block Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory.
The council is set to vote Thursday on a draft resolution from Egypt that would “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem,” according to Reuters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked the United States to veto the measure, and Trump agrees.
“The resolution being considered at the United Nations Security Council regarding Israel should be vetoed,” Trump said in a statement. “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,” he said.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., also called on the U.S. to veto it.
“These stunts at the UN serve only one purpose — to defame and delegitimize the democratic State of Israel,” Ryan said. “This resolution will undermine peace and mutual cooperation by pushing the parties further away from direct negotiations. The administration should veto it.”
The resolution is aimed at keeping Israel from building more settlements on land Palestinians want to use to create their own state. It’s unknown how the U.S. will vote, but the U.S. vetoed a resolution condemning Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian areas in 2011.
The Obama administration has waffled on Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. While President Obama is not in favor of those settlements, the United States has never called the settlements or the occupation illegal, although other countries have.
