Unbelievable, Obama took a break from his vacation. Shows you how important kicking Israel was.
Via The Sydney Morning Herald:
On December 21, amid his morning workout, an afternoon round of golf and a family dinner with friends, President Barack Obama interrupted his Hawaii vacation to consult by phone with his top national security team in Washington. Egypt had introduced a resolution at the UN Security Council condemning Israeli settlements as illegal, and a vote was scheduled for the next day.
The idea had been circulating at the council for months, but the abrupt timing was a surprise. Obama was open to abstaining, he said on the call, provided the measure was “balanced” in its censure of terrorism and Palestinian violence and there were no last-minute changes in the text.
Sceptics, including Vice-President Joe Biden, warned of a fierce backlash in Congress and Israel itself. But most agreed that the time had come to take a stand. The rapid increase of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, despite escalating US criticism, could very well close the door to any hope of negotiating side-by-side Israeli and Palestinian states. Pending Israeli legislation would retroactively legalise settlements already constructed on Palestinian land.
The resolution’s sponsors, four countries in addition to Egypt, were determined to call a vote before Obama left office. A US veto would not only imply approval of Israeli actions but also likely take Israel off the hook for at least the next four years during President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.
“People debated whether the backlash to the vote, if we abstained, would do more harm than good, that it would reverberate into our politics, into Israeli politics, and would accelerate trends,” a senior administration official said. But “every potential argument about making things worse is already happening”.