UN Security Council postpones vote on Israeli settlements

by Jordan Fabian - 12/22/16 11:24 AM ET

The U.N. Security Council on Thursday postponed a vote on a controversial resolution that demanded an end to Israeli settlement construction, according to media reports.

Egypt had circulated the draft resolution Wednesday and the measure was to be voted on Thursday afternoon. But Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi reportedly instructed his country’s U.N. mission to postpone the vote.

No new date has been scheduled, and the vote could be put off “potentially indefinitely,” according to Reuters.

{mosads}The move came after heavy pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President-elect Donald Trump.

Netanyahu appealed directly to Sisi to delay the vote, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Before that, both Netanyahu and Trump called on the Obama administration to veto the resolution.

The resolution highlighted longstanding tensions between the Obama administration, Netanyahu’s government and Republicans over peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu and Trump both said the U.S. would violate its longstanding practice of opposing U.N. involvement in resolving the issue of settlement construction in areas claimed by Palestinians if it declined to veto the measure.

The U.S. vetoed a similar resolution in 2011, but it was unclear how the administration would handle the issue this time.

Netanyahu on Thursday praised “the willingness over many years of the United States to stand up in the U.N. and veto anti-Israel resolutions.”

“I hope the U.S. won’t abandon this policy,” he said.

“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,” Trump said in a statement.

“This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis.”

Tags Donald Trump