House Votes Overwhelmingly to Condemn U.N. Over Israeli Settlements Vote

posted on: Jan 6, 2017

Donald Trump has made it clear he will support Israel in ways that go well beyond existing U.S. foreign policy, which has long been opposed to Israeli settlement construction. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

By Nahal Toosi

POLITICO

The House voted overwhelmingly to rebuke the United Nations for passing a resolution that condemned Israeli settlement construction, a bipartisan slap that also targets the Obama administration while signaling a rocky road ahead for U.S.-U.N. relations under soon-to-be-President Donald Trump.

The House measure, which passed 342-80 on Thursday, is likely to be followed by a similar, largely symbolic non-binding resolution in the Senate.

Although its wording did not explicitly state so, the House statement also was a scolding of outgoing President Barack Obama’s administration for not vetoing the U.N. resolution. Some U.S. lawmakers already are saying they want to go further in the coming months by stripping the United Nations of U.S. funding.

“The United States Government should oppose and veto future United Nations Security Council resolutions that seek to impose solutions to final status issues, or are one-sided and anti-Israel,” the House measure states. It also demands that the U.N. repeal or fundamentally alter the measure it passed.

“We are condemning what happened because we think it’s unfair and unjust,” said Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, during the debate ahead of the vote. “Throughout its entire history, the state of Israel has never gotten a fair shake from the United Nations.”

Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan declared himself “stunned” that the Obama administration allowed the U.N. to go after Israel. “Do not be fooled. This U.N. Security Council resolution was not about settlements, and it certainly was not about peace,” Ryan said. “It was about one thing and one thing only: Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish Democratic state.”

The U.N. Security Council voted 14-0 to condemn Israeli settlements on Dec. 23, despite vigorous opposition from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as Trump, both of whom demanded that the United States exercise its veto. Trump’s decision to weigh in came at the behest of the Israelis, and it was unusual in the sense that during presidential transition periods the incoming commander-in-chief typically defers to the sitting president on policy decisions.

The Obama administration pulled out the stops to explain why it chose to abstain instead of blocking the U.N. measure as it had in the past. In a lengthy speech in the days after the U.N. vote, Secretary of State John Kerry pointed out that Israel had rapidly escalated its construction of settlements in land claimed by Palestinians to the point where it was risking the viability of a two-state solution for the long-running Middle East conflict. Obama aides emphasized that the U.N. resolution condemns violence by Palestinians, but they also made clear they were warning Netanyahu to stop catering to the extreme right-wing agenda of many Israeli settlers.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat from Texas, was among the lawmakers who praised the Obama administration’s efforts and spoke against the House measure. “The truth is that ever expanding Israeli settlements, many of them first constructed in total violation of Israeli law, are a significant obstacle” to peace,” he said.

That there were several dozen Democrats, and a handful of Republicans, who voted against the resolution will be seen as a victory in some corners, including among left-leaning Jewish activists who took comfort in the fact that rival resolutions with softer language had also been proposed.

Nonetheless, that so many Democrats and Republicans joined to condemn the U.N. resolution once again underscored the depth of the bipartisan support for the Israeli government in Congress. Thursday’s House measure could even help some Democrats who supported the Iran nuclear deal, which Israel opposed, to burnish their pro-Israel credentials.

Trump has made it clear he will support Israel in ways that go well beyond existing U.S. foreign policy, which has long been opposed to Israeli settlement construction. The president-elect’s nominee for ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, has dismissed the possibility of a Palestinian state and has long supported the settlements. Friedman, with Trump’s blessing, wants to move the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, whose status remains contested. That will likely provoke anger in the Arab world.

To further signal their displeasure with the United Nations, some U.S. lawmakers are searching for ways to inflict financial pain on the international forum.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who chairs a key appropriations subcommittee, has vowed to “suspend or significantly reduce” that America’s contribution to the United Nations, which amounts to about 22 percent of the U.N.’s regular budget. Such a move is not unprecedented: in the 1990s, through efforts by Republican Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, the U.S. withheld millions in dues to the organization in order to push through reforms.

But Graham is likely to face resistance from Democrats and even some fellow Republicans, several of whom said in interviews that they would be open to reducing the U.S. contribution but not to eliminating it outright. Considering how much more skepticism there is about multilateral forums among Republicans than Democrats, such resistance underscores the complexity of America’s relationship with the United Nations.

“I think we have to participate in the United Nations, but I’m very disappointed in our lack of our exercising our rights at the United Nations, or exercising them properly,” said GOP Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, adding that he is interested to hear the details of Graham’s proposal and is “inclined to be supportive.”

Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, meanwhile, said “there are certain elements of the U.N. we want to keep.” Although it was not clear exactly what he was referring to, the United Nations plays a major role in assisting refugees throughout the world; it also is involved in peace-keeping operations on many fronts.

GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma said that while he has long advocated for de-funding the United Nations, he believes it is unlikely Congress will succeed in doing so.

“Things of that magnitude are always difficult,” Inhofe said. “There are a handful of Republicans who really feel that multinational activities are more important than it really is, and every Democrat thinks that. So the numbers would be very hard to deal with.”

Still, many U.N. officials fear that, under Trump, the U.S. will follow the playbook laid out during the George W. Bush presidential administration, during which the U.S. was often at odds with the world body, thanks in part to the tough tone adopted by Bush U.N. envoy John Bolton.

Trump has expressed skepticism about the nature and role of the United Nations over the years, in line with his suspicion of multilateral organizations more broadly. Still, one of the Republican president-elect’s earliest picks for a top administration job was South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to serve as America’s ambassador to the United Nations, and Trump aides have said he intends to keep that position in the Cabinet.

The president-elect spoke Wednesday morning on the phone with the new U.N. secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, according to transition officials who did not give details of the conversation. Guterres previously led the U.N. agency that helps refugees and has been a passionate advocate for that cause; Trump has insisted the U.S. should not accept any Syrian refugees, putting him at odds with U.N. priorities.