UN: Shame on Obama!

If I could cast my vote for President in 2008 once again, I would still vote for Barack Obama.  Can you imagine where we would be had McCain and Palin won?  Half the Teabaggers could be trying to assassinate McCain to put Palin in the White House.  But I digress.  I still call the as I see them.  Barack Obama has done a shameful thing, an act that is virtually guaranteed to delay any possibility of peace in the Middle East.

Last month, a number of prominent scholars, activists, and former U.S. diplomats signed an open letter to President Obama urging him to support an upcoming U.N. Security Council “resolution condemning Israeli settlements” in the internationally recognized Palestinian territories. The letter warned that vetoing the resolution would “severely undermine US credibility and interests, placing us firmly outside of the international consensus, and further diminishing our ability to mediate this conflict.”

Yet yesterday, as the resolution appeared to be heading to passage, the Obama administration directed its delegation at the United Nations to veto it, killing any official U.N. condemnation of Israel’s colonization practices in the Palestinian territories. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said that while the veto didn’t mean that the U.S. approved of the Israeli settlements policy, that it issued the veto anyway because the resolution would risk “hardening the positions of both sides and could encourage the parties to say out of negotiations“:

The Obama administration wielded its first veto at the UN security council last night in a move to swipe down a resolution condemning Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory.

The US stood alone among the 15 members of the security council in failing to condemn the resumption of settlement building that has caused a serious rift between the Israeli government and the Palestinian authority and derailed attempts to kick-start the peace process. […]

The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, said the decision to use the veto power – open to the five permanent members of the UN, of which the US is one – “should not be misunderstood to mean we support settlement activity”.

She said Washington’s view was that the Israeli settlements lacked legitimacy, but added: “Unfortunately, this draft resolution risks hardening the positions of both sides and could encourage the parties to stay out of negotiations.”

The argument that the U.S. is using for vetoing the resolution does not seem to hold up against history. The United States has used its veto power 33 times before the recent veto in order to sink Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, and the peace process is as beleaguered as ever… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Think Progress>

Actually, nothing has “hardened the positions” more than the impediment that Israel’s continued settlement building in areas guaranteed to Palestine by treaty places in the way of peace.  Obama knows this and has said so in the past.  I consider this an act of cowardice on his part, because he does not want to set off a fight with Republicans, who would have a conniption fit had Obama done the right thing.

Making peace requires a two state solution, as agreed between the parties, but as long as Israel is allowed to pursue a one state solution by attrition, with US protection from international pressure, Israel has no incentive to make peace.