Netanyahu: On Jerusalem, I don't care what the UN says

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "Western Wall is not occupied territory and I don't care what the U.N. has to say about that" • Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas: "If settlement in Jerusalem and E1 continues, there will be no other choice but to dissolve the authority and give the responsibility for the Palestinians back to Israel."

Daniel Siryoti and Shlomo Cesana

A construction site in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo.  | Photo credit: Oren Nachshon

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The U.N.’s position that, based on international law, the Temple Mount does not belong to Israel, is "irrelevant," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told three Israeli TV news outlets in a series of pre-election interviews over the weekend.

"The Western Wall has always been and always will belong to Israel,” Netanyahu said. “Since 1967 we have been building in Jerusalem despite world opinion. All of Israel's governments ordered the construction of homes in Jerusalem's Jewish neighborhoods, and we are no different in that respect. If the U.N. does not accept the principle of our construction in Jerusalem, for what purpose was this state established?"

Asked if the interviews to the three channels was in response to a drop in support for the Likud-Yisrael Beytenu coalition in recent polls and the strengthening of Habayit Hayehudi ("The Jewish Home"), Netanyahu replied, "Forget about that; that's only an urban legend. We have resided in the Jewish nation's capital for 3,000 years. The Western Wall is not occupied territory and I don't care what the U.N. says about that."

Netanyahu said the Jan. 22 Knesset election would send a message to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashal. He said the three enemy leaders would be waiting for the voting to end to discover if Israel's prime minister had been given a strong mandate to govern or if he had been dealt a blow.

He also said he would prefer to leave the position of housing and construction minister in the hands of his Likud party, if it gained enough seats in the election, and not have it go to Shas again.

In response to Netanyahu's remarks, Labor Chairwoman Shelly Yachimovich said, "Ahmadinejad, Nasrallah and Mashal will not be voting in the coming election. Israeli citizens will be the ones to decide. It is unprecedented that a prime minister does not bother to reveal his platform and vision, and instead chooses to strike fear into the hearts of citizens in an attempt to divert the public debate to issues for which he feels no need to be accountable to the public."

Hatnuah ("The Movement") Chairwoman Tzipi Livni condemned the decision to build in E1 and said, "Netanyahu's declarations of his intention to authorize construction only serve to endanger Israel's vital interests and weaken Jerusalem and its surrounding residential blocs. His announcements are only meant for voter consumption, and we will all pay the price for his policy when even one home is built."

Meanwhile, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas threatened to resign and dissolve the authority if Israel went through with its plan to construct thousands of new housing units in the E1 corridor between Maaleh Adumim and Jerusalem.

According to a report in the Palestinian media on Saturday, Abbas said, "Israel is crossing a red line in announcing it will build in E1, knowing such an announcement will lead to the end of the peace process. The Palestinian Authority will not be the watchdog for Israel's program of expansion in Palestinian territories. If this goes on, there will be no other choice but to dissolve the authority and give the responsibility for the Palestinians back to Israel."

Miami Mayor: ‘Israeli Settlements’ Is The Wrong Word To Use

Israel should be describing Jewish communities beyond the Green Line as developments, not settlements, Carlos Gimenez, the recently elected mayor of Miami-Dade County, said on Friday.

Gimenez, on a six-day visit to Israel with four other mayors of large US cities as part of Project Interchange, an educational institute of the American Jewish Committee, said the reality of the settlements – as opposed to the stereotype that the word invokes – was what surprised him most during his first visit to the country.

“When you conjure up the word ‘settlement,’ you think about the Old West, pioneers and all that,” he said in an interview just after visiting Efrat in the West Bank.

“It is really more like a development, that is all it is,” he said. “Settlement is the wrong word to use. If you want to describe it to Americans, it is really a development.

“We spoke to someone who lived in a settlement. Just a normal person. Basically just someone who wants to live in a suburb. That’s it. Is there conflict there? Obviously. But [Efrat] is not what I thought it was going to be.”

With some 2.5 million people living in Miami-Dade country, Gimenez, 57, elected in June, is mayor of the eighth most populous county in the US. It is also the metropolitan area with one of America’s largest Jewish populations, one of the reasons he said he was keen on visiting Israel.

Asked if he expected to be criticized for visiting Israel on a trip sponsored by an American Jewish organization, Gimenez said he could have come under criticism had the trip been funded by Miami- Dade taxpayers. But “taxpayer money didn’t fund this, I was invited by the AJC.”

He stressed this point on the calendar listing of his website, where under the November 19 entry it reads: “Mayor Gimenez selected to participate in leadership and education program alongside fellow US mayors. The trip will not be funded by taxpayer dollars.”

Gimenez said a trip to Israel helped him better understand a “large number of my constituents.”

“I’m Cuban-American, I understand a lot of my Cuban-American and Hispanic brethren that live in Miami,” he said. “It is always good to put yourself in other people’s shoes and walk in them for a while, to look at things from their perspective and see how they think. So for me it was natural. If anyone gives me flak about this, then they don’t understand that. I’m here to understand what Israel is about, and Israel is very important to a very large number of my constituents.”

With Hispanics, the fastest growing demographic in the US, Israel and various Jewish organizations are keen on making inroads into a community not seen as having a strong, emotional pro-Israel reflex. The exception, however, are Cuban-Americans.

Gimenez, who pointed out that there were many differences and nuances within the US Hispanic community, characterized Cuban- Americans as “more conservative in their outlook and very pro-Israel.”

“Cuban-Americans identify very closely with Israel,” he said. “We were basically without a country, and know what it is like to be persecuted for your beliefs.”

Among the other strong pro-Israel Cuban-American politicians are Florida Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who like Gimenez was born in Havana and immigrated to the US as a child; and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, and a Republican whose name is often mentioned as a possible 2012 vice-presidential candidate.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post just before his group was about to enter Yad Vashem, Gimenez said that “in order to understand the present, you have to understand the past. You have to understand how you got to where you are right now – and the past and the history is a way to understand that.”

He said he hoped his trip would lead to economic cooperation between his city and Israel that would benefit both places.

Israel’s reality doesn’t adequately come out in 30- second television sound bites and short news stories, he said.

“You can’t understand the deep feelings, the emotional feelings here, on both sides, and the fact that you live here with the conflict on a daily basis, and that it can touch you on a daily basis,” he said.

“This is something we don’t understand, something we have never had in the US.

“We don’t live under that threat,” Gimenez added.

“We visited Sderot and saw Gaza on the other side. We don’t live like that, with a 15-second warning to get into a bomb shelter. It gives me a greater understanding of the courage – it’s just a different way of life.”

The four other mayors on the trip were Houston’s Annise Parker, St. Paul, Minnesota’s Christopher Coleman, Provo, Utah’s John Curtis, and Mark Mallory of Cincinnati, Ohio.

The trip also included five other top municipal officials from those cities, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Miami, Florida and Portland, Oregon.

Gilo in Perspective

Israel has recently come in for international criticism over the approval for construction of 900 housing units in the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo. Irrespective of one’s views on this policy, it is the responsibility of the media to report on Gilo accurately and with the relevant context.

So how did some of the media refer to Gilo?

• The ”occupied Jerusalem suburb of Gilo.” – The Economist
• The “Gilo settlement in Jerusalem.” – Reuters
• A “Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem.” – BBC
• A “controversial settlement on the outskirts of east Jerusalem.” – The Guardian
• A “settlement in East Jerusalem.” – The Daily Telegraph
• “one of a dozen Israeli settlements in mostly Arab east Jerusalem.” – AFP
• A “part of Jerusalem claimed by Palestinians.” – LA Times

The Christian Science Monitor could not even decide on Gilo’s location, introducing it as a “Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem” in the first paragraph of the story and then referring to the “area in southern Jerusalem” in the next.

The prize for the worst inaccuracy, however, goes to The Times of London, whose staff editorial spoke of “Israel’s decision to go ahead with new settlements around Jerusalem.” Of course, Gilo is certainly not new and, while some existing areas are being developed within existing boundaries to allow for natural growth, there are no plans whatsoever on the part of the Israeli government to create any new settlements in the Jerusalem region.

Is this symptomatic of the journalistic laziness surrounding the entire issue of settlements and precisely what these actually refer to? After all, many media outlets do nothing to dispel the largely mistaken image of all Israeli settlements as a collection of isolated homes on windswept hilltops. In the case of Gilo, this is as far from the truth as could be possible.

And who then is influencing the language of those international politicians who are critical of the Israeli building plans? Are the media responsible for creating a skewed impression of Gilo due to past indiscretions regarding the language of settlements?

As Maurice Ostroff, writing in the Jerusalem Post, explains:

The $64,000 question then, is whether Gilo is in fact a settlement and if so, what type of settlement it is. To all who prefer to analyze a situation before arriving at a conclusion it is important to look at the facts in context. …

The reality is that Gilo is very different than the outposts in the West Bank. It is not in east Jerusalem as widely reported. It is a Jerusalem neighborhood with a population of around 40,000. The ground was bought by Jews before WWII and settled in 1971 in south west Jerusalem opposite Mount Gilo within the municipal borders. There is no inference whatsoever that it rests on Arab land.

The current building approval was not a deliberately provocative political decision by Binyamin Netanyahu as reported in some media. The plan was initiated a long time ago by the Israel Land Administration. Since Gilo is an integral part of the city, the approval was given by Jerusalem’s Construction and Planning Committee and, as Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat said in a statement released by his office, “Israeli law does not discriminate between Arabs and Jews, or between east and west of the city. The demand to cease construction just for Jews is illegal, as in the US and any other enlightened place in the world. The Jerusalem Municipality will continue to enable construction in every part of the city for Jews and Arabs alike.”

The Washington Post, at least, was more nuanced in its language, describing Gilo as a “disputed neighborhood of Jerusalem” and providing a map to put Gilo in some geographical context.

CNN also referred to Gilo as a ”disputed neighborhood on Jerusalem’s southern outskirts”. Indeed, CNN is one of a number of media outlets including The New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, Boston Globe and CBS News, which have all, in the past, recognized the particular geography of Gilo, referring to it as a “neighborhood.”

For more background, see this Jerusalem Post article and keep an eye out on how your local media outlet reports on Gilo.

The Strategic Significance of Har Homa

Seven 10 years ago terrorist snipers attacked southern Jerusalem. The stage is now being set for a repeat performance.

Last month Three years ago the Israeli Ministry ofHousing issued a tender for the construction of some 300 apartment units in the Har Homa neighborhood of Jerusalem. Immediately, Palestinian spokesmen screamed bloody murder: Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat described the housing starts as "raised fists" against the peace process. “We loudly ask the U.S. administration to act as the judge and compel Israel to implement its commitments which the Road Map plan specified," Erekat told the Voice of Palestine. "If Israel went on, this will destroy all the efforts that aim at launching a meaningful peace process leading to ending the Israeli occupation which started in the 1967," he continued.

No one was surprised when Erekat’s complaint was quickly echoed by the UN Secretary General. "The United Nations' position on the illegality of settlements is well known," Secretary General Ban said. "The Americans must pressure the Israeli government to stop settlement activities."

The real surprise came when U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined the chorus and expressed her opposition. She told a news conference and Israel’s Foreign Minister Livni, "We're in a time when the goal is to build maximum confidence between the parties and this doesn't help to build confidence. There should not be anything which might prejudge final-status negotiations," Rice said. "It's even more important now that we are on the eve of the beginning of the negotiations.“ One British newspaper described her comments as, “delivering what for the Bush administration is rare criticism of Israel over its settlements policy.”
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November 2010 -- President Obama and his spokesmen decried a new Israeli announcement of plans to build more homes in Har Homa.
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The de-legitimization of Jerusalem’s new (post-1967) neighborhoods and the diplomatic attack on their expansion appear to have begun anew. The last time we saw such an assault was in 2000, and it was accompanied by deadly gunfire, as well.

During the first two years of the Intifada, more than 400 shooting attacks were unleashed on the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo and its 40,000 residents from the nearby Arab town of Beit Jala. Although the town was predominantly Christian, Beit Jala was infiltrated by Fatah’s Tanzim gunmen who shot at Gilo, hoping for Israeli retaliation against the local residents. Gilo residents began to evacuate. Belatedly the Israeli government provided cement barriers and bullet-proof glass to protect the Jerusalem neighborhood’s residents.

Ignoring the fact that the neighborhood consisted of major apartment complexes, schools and shopping centers, much of the world press condoned the attacks on the “Israeli settlement,” as if it were some temporary military camp. The British press was quick to claim that Gilo was “illegal under international law.” [See The Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg .] Reuters’ correspondent Christine Hauser tried to show that it was the Arab town of Beit Jala under Israeli attack by describing the piles of brass bullet shells collected by the Palestinian locals, not realizing that spent casings are found at the source of the shooting, not the target. The media distortion was so great that in 2001 CNN issued a memorandum to its staff stating that "We refer to Gilo as a 'Jewish neighborhood on the outskirts of Jerusalem'... We don't refer to it as a settlement."

Har Homa, established in 1997, is another Jewish neighborhood on Jerusalem’s southern flanks. With an estimated6,000 20,000 residents, the suburb is a strategic impediment to Palestinian attempts to link up northern Bethlehem with Jerusalem. Google Earth’s maps of the area show Har Homa less than a mile from the Palestinian Authority-controlled town of Bethlehem. Just north of Har Homa are several Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, and the Old City of Jerusalem lies just 3.5 miles beyond. No wonder Palestinians are launching an attack on the building of a measly 300 apartments.

See more history of Har Homa here.

Who do the territories belong to?

Israel Should Stop Hiding at the U.N. By David Suissa

Why is Israel hiding while its Palestinian "peace partners" are accusing the Jewish state of engaging in an illegal enterprise? In case you missed it, the Palestinian Authority is planning to introduce a resolution to the United Nations Security Council this week declaring all Jewish settlements "illegal." It's not enough that most of the world already believes this; the Palestinians are feeling so confident these days, they've decided to push their luck and intensify their campaign to malign Israel.

Israel, no doubt expecting that the United States will veto the measure, has responded by burying its head in the sand. This is a big mistake.

For one thing, hiding reinforces the image of guilt. Israel already looks super-guilty on the issue of settlements. Keeping quiet suggests to the world that Israel essentially agrees with the accusations.

But beyond the need to play defense, this resolution offers, I believe, a chance for Israel to win a rare public relations victory on a global stage. Israel can use the U.N. forum to turn the tables on the Palestinians and present to the world a message it never hears.

It can actually push back on the issue of the legality of settlements.

You're probably thinking: How can anyone in his right mind challenge the accepted truism that the Jewish settlements are illegal? And even if Israel could successfully make a case that the settlements are not illegal, so what? How could that contribute to the peace process or the two-state solution?

The sharpest answer I've heard on this point came from Talia Shulman Gold, the local representative of CAMERA, a watchdog organization that fights anti-Israel bias in the media. Because I sit on its board of advisers, I recently hosted a small gathering at my home. That night, after Shulman Gold made the case that any discussion of the legality of settlements must include the San Remo resolution of 1920, I asked her that very question: "So what? Even if you're right, how will this help move us forward?"

"Israel must show the world that it is not a thief," she answered. "Even if Israel ends up giving up the West Bank, it must show that it is doing it for peace - not because it is returning stolen land. As long as the world believes the Palestinian narrative that this is stolen land, Israel's painful land concessions have no perceived value. This is one reason negotiations have gone nowhere."

What I liked about her answer is that it opens up conversation, instead of slamming the door shut. My eyes glaze over when I hear arguments from some of my friends on the religious right, such as, "We can't give back the land because God gave it to us!" This might well be true, but it doesn't make for great conversation. It makes everything black and white.

One point Shulman Gold tried to bring home the other night is that the legality of Jewish settlements is anything but black and white. If you're interested in this subject, I suggest you Google Middle East scholar Eli E. Hertz and go to his Myths and Facts Web site (mythsandfacts.com), in particular the section on "Mandate for Palestine." He describes this mandate as "an historical League of Nations document [that] laid down the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an entitlement unaltered in international law."

According to Hertz, this was not "a naïve vision briefly embraced by the international community," but, rather, a unanimous declaration by the entire League of Nations (51 countries) on July 24, 1922, which he quotes: "Whereas recognition has been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country."

Hertz, as well as many others, makes a case that the League of Nations agreement was legally "inherited" by the United Nations, that it has never been revoked and that it is still legally binding according to international law. Subsequent U.N. resolutions, they argue, even the one establishing the State of Israel, did not override the League of Nations agreement and never established the illegality of Jewish settlements. They also punch holes in the strongest argument against their case, article 49 of the Fourth Geneva convention.

My point here is not to sway you one way or the other on the legality of Jewish settlements. It's simply to suggest that this issue is a lot more complicated than the Palestinian public relations machine alleges and to suggest that Israel should not be afraid to stand up at the United Nations this week and face this P.R. monster head on.

Israel should make a bold and compelling case based on international law that it doesn't believe the settlements are illegal, and then tell the world the following: "For years, Israel has offered to evacuate Jewish settlements for the sake of peace. We have done so not because we think the settlements are illegal, but because we value peace so highly.

"Unfortunately, because so many of our past offers and gestures have been rewarded by terror, rejection and bad faith, the mood among many of our people today is guided by extreme caution and mistrust.

"The resolution advanced by our Palestinian neighbors this week is another example of a needless and poisonous gesture - one that inevitably will breed even more mistrust and take us even further away from peace and reconciliation."

David Suissa is the founder of OLAM magazine, OLAM.org and is a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. He can be reached atSuissa@olam.org .

Did Israel illegally demolished a Palestinian national landmark in East Jerusalem?

FACT

On January 9, 2011, Israeli crews began demolition work on the Shepherd Hotel building in the Sheikh Jarrah community of Jerusalem to make way for the planned construction of a Jewish housing project. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas insists the hotel is a historic national landmark and Palestinian Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat claims that Israel is illegally demolishing the hotel as part of their attempt to “ethnically cleanse Jerusalem from its Palestinian inhabitants, culture and history.” ⁴⁶¹

In truth, the hotel, situated in the middle of a predominantly Arab neighborhood that overlooks Hebrew University and the Mount of Olives, was built in the 1930s. The building served as an Israeli district court for almost two decades, but has been vacant for many years and was privately purchased in 1985 by an American businessman who plans to build an apartment complex on the site. The project will not displace any Arab residents or affect any other buildings in the neighborhood. The site was never considered a Palestinian cultural heritage spot and, in fact, its only claim to Palestinian historical fame was that it served as a home for Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Nazi collaborator.⁴⁶² The British exiled al-Husseiniduring the Mandatory period and confiscated the property; ultimately the building's rights were passed to Israelfrom Jordan after the Six Day War. Contrary to reports, the Israeli government did not illegally confiscate the building under the “Absentee Property Law” and the sale of the property in 1985 was conducted in the same legal manner as other real estate transactions. ⁴⁶³

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized Israel’s actions, suggesting that demolition of an unused building somehow “undermines peace efforts to achieve a two-state solution.” ⁴⁶⁴ In doing so, Clinton once again - as with the earlier insistence on a settlement freeze - gave President Abbas an excuse for refusing to return to peace negotiations advocated by President Obama.

There are no precedents or statutes in international law that would prohibit Israel from granting construction permits to private citizens to build in its capital. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “No democratic government would impose a ban on Jews purchasing private property… Just as Arabs can buy property in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Jews can buy property in predominantly Arab neighborhoods.”⁴⁶⁵

"Calling Jerusalem a settlement is a misinterpretation, an insult to the city. It is incomprehensible that they are mixing questions of private rights, international law and politics. [The hotel was built] on private land, the development of which has nothing to do with diplomacy." —Yigal Palmor, Israel Ministry of Foregin Affairs Spokesman

Obama's Moment of Truth at the UN

President Obama has affirmed repeatedly that, under his leadership, America's bond with Israel is absolute, unshakeable, and rock solid. But the Israeli public is not convinced. AJerusalem Post poll in March 2010 found that just 9 percent of Jewish Israelis think his administration is pro-Israel, against 48 percent who think it is pro-Palestinian. J Street's pollster, Jim Gerstein, looked for a different result, but even his survey found that 55 percent of Israelis do not believe that Obama supports Israel.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also is not convinced that Obama is necessarily in Israel's camp. Abbas sees rich opportunities to drive a wedge between Israel and its "most reliable" partner, particularly on what the Arabs consider settlements in Jerusalem. Abbas witnessed, from Obama's first day, this administration's fixation on the most divisive and vexatious issue in the U.S.-Israel relationship. He sees that Obama does not regard the Jewish presence in the parts of Jerusalem that Jordan held before 1967 to be legitimate. (One wonders: Is Obama aware that more than half the Jews in Jerusalem live in this forbidden eastern half of the capital?)

Few blame Abbas for exploiting the opening that Obama created. Obama very kindly pointed a finger to his own soft underbelly, and Abbas merely accepted the invitation to target the sweet spot the president so generously exposed. Abbas told Obama that he cannot have the peace talks the president so desperately craves until Obama imposes on Israel the freeze in Jerusalem that the president promised.

Secretary of State Clinton admits that the Palestinian leader's demand for a settlement freeze as a precondition for talks is unprecedented. For 17 years, Abbas did negotiate with seven Israeli prime ministers without setting a precondition for a settlements freeze. But now he says a freeze is an absolute and non-negotiable requirement before talks even can begin.Abbas says, "At first, President Obama stated ... that Israel must stop all construction activities in the settlements. Could we demand less than that?" Subtly, and without any audible objection from Obama, Abbas has abandoned the Oslo policy of negotiating with Israel and reverted to the pre-Oslo strategy that it is America's job to impose a solution. Abbasremonstrated to Obama, "You said in the United Nations ... 'A Palestinian state is in the vital national security interest of the United States' ... This is a promise and a debt around your neck."

This is the first time since Oslo that the Palestinian leadership is flatly refusing to sit and negotiate with a prime minister of Israel. The peace process began with a pledge from Arafatthat the "PLO commits itself to the Middle East peace process ... and declares that all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations." Abbas repeated this pledge just three years ago at the Annapolis Conference in front of 47 foreign ministers, where he declared that "We agree to immediately launch good-faith, bilateral ... vigorous, ongoing and continuous negotiations." Now Abbas is putting all that aside, to pressure the U.S. to pressure Israel.

This month, Abbas is taking his campaign to the UN Security Council, where the Palestinians are circulating a draft resolution that would declare Israeli "settlements" in Jerusalem to be "illegal." The draft demands a halt to all construction in the eastern half of Israel's capital city. It's openly a maneuver to hoist Obama on his own petard. "We drafted it using the same words that Secretary Clinton is using and so we don't see why the U.S. would veto it," Abbas said.

Successive administrations have deplored settlement activity as an obstacle to peace, but no American president since Jimmy Carter has taken the view that building Jewish homes in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem is "illegal." Carter said in April 1980: "We do not think they are legal,” because, his secretary of state explained, "Article 49, paragraph 6, of the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the territories.” (This paragraph says, "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.") But defenders of Israel respond that obligations under the Geneva Convention apply to territory occupied by one state but legally recognized as the property of another state. The West Bank and East Jerusalem are not such a case, because they were not legally recognized as the sovereign territory of any state prior to their capture by Israel in 1967. They are, therefore, "disputed" rather than "occupied" territories, and the Convention does not apply.

President Ronald Reagan rejected Carter's position and said the settlements were “ill-advised” and “unnecessarily provocative” but “not illegal." All American presidents since Reagan have taken this view, and none has repeated Carter's formulation that settlements are "illegal." Obama said that settlements "undermine efforts to achieve peace," but he, too, has not said that they are "illegal."

The Carter administration was also the first and only U.S. government to vote in favor of a UN Security Council Resolution declaring Israeli settlements to be "illegal": Resolution 465 on March 1, 1980. (Carter subsequently disavowed his ambassador's vote for this resolution, saying that his instruction had not been properly communicated and that the U.S. should have abstained. An abstention still would shave permitted the resolution to pass.)

Resolution 465 said that "the Fourth Geneva Convention ... is applicable to the Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem." It said that "all measures taken by Israel to change the ... demographic composition ... or status of the ... territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem ... have no legal validity and that Israel's policy and practices of settling parts of its population ... in those territories constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention." In addition to voting for Resolution 465, Carter abstained on (and thereby permitted to pass) two other resolutions against Israeli settlements containing similar language: Resolutions 446 on March 22, 1979, and 452 on July 20, 1979.

No president since Carter has permitted anti-Israel UN Security Council Resolutions on settlements to pass. Ronald Reagan vetoed two: a draft vetoed August 2, 1983 (while Menachem Begin was Israeli prime minister) and a draft vetoed January 30, 1986 (during Shimon Peres's term). And Bill Clinton vetoed three draft resolutions condemning Israeli settlements, one while Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister, draft Resolution S/1995/394vetoed on May 17, 1995; and two while Benjamin Netanyahu was prime minister the first time, draft Resolution S/1997/199 vetoed on March 7, 1997 (even though it was sponsored by the United Kingdom and France), and draft Resolution S/1997/241 vetoed on March 21, 1997.

In addition to these five vetoes, successive U.S. administrations since Carter have defeated by "silent veto" many other anti-settlement initiatives at the Security Council that did not reach the voting stage because fervent American opposition dissuaded their proponents from pressing the issue.

Every American president since Nixon has used the veto to block resolutions hostile to Israel. Richard Nixon vetoed two such draft Security Council resolutions, Gerald Ford four, Ronald Reagan 18 (!), George H.W. Bush four, Bill Clinton three, and George W. Bush nine. Even Jimmy Carter mustered the courage to veto one, on April 30, 1980, because it was inimical to the Camp David Accords he had brokered. In all, seven American presidents have recorded 41 vetoes in Israel's defense at the UN Security Council.

Lack of balance in the 41 draft resolutions vetoed was the reason stated or implied most frequently to explain the need for a veto. Resolutions deploring Israel's use of force or Israeli security measures have been vetoed for failing to acknowledge and equally criticize actions on the Arab side, especially terrorist acts, that gave rise to the Israeli measures for self-defense. Resolutions proposing international conferences and other diplomatic initiatives favored by the Arabs have been vetoed because they would conflict with U.S. peace initiatives and direct negotiations among the parties. Several draft resolutions were vetoed because they were deemed inconsistent with Resolutions 242 and 338 or with signed peace agreements. At least two draft resolutions were vetoed because they blamed the government of Israel for extreme acts that were committed by a few Israeli citizens who were being investigated and prosecuted by the Israeli authorities. In about half the 41 veto statements, the American representative acknowledged that the United States shared concerns about a given Israeli action but objected to the wording of the resolution or with the appropriateness of bringing the issue to the Security Council.

The Obama administration has declined up to now to say whether it would veto a draft resolution declaring Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem to be illegal, because,said State Department spokesman Mark C. Toner on December 29, "It’s a hypothetical at this point." But Toner did signal unhappiness with the Palestinian draft resolution: "Direct negotiations are the only path through which the parties will ultimately reach ... our mutual goal. And final status issues can only be resolved through negotiations between the parties and not by recourse to the UN Security Council, so we’ve consistently opposed any attempt to take these kinds of issues to the Council."

Members of Congress are less reticent about the necessity to veto. On June 21, 2010, a bipartisan letter to Obama from 87 senators said, "We ask you to stand firm in the future at the United Nations Security Council and to use your veto power, if necessary, to prevent any ... biased or one-sided resolutions from passing."

A tactic sometimes used at the Security Council by administrations in the past is to offer a substitute resolution with softer language or added content to make it less one-sided. A substitute could omit the assertion that settlements are a violation of the Geneva Convention and therefore are "illegal." Special Mideast Envoy George Mitchell said on January 6, 2010, "There are disputed legal issues [in East Jerusalem]. ...We could spend the next 14 years arguing over disputed legal issues or we can try to get a negotiation to resolve them in a manner that meets the aspirations of both societies."

A bolder approach would be a more balanced substitute resolution that not only removed the dubious legal claim but that also declared the Palestinian policy of setting unprecedented preconditions for peace talks to be unacceptable. George Mitchell said on September 22, 2009, "We do not believe in preconditions. We do not impose them. And we urge others not to impose preconditions." A resolution should demand that the Palestinian Authority sit down with Israel to negotiate, the central imperative of the Oslo Accords. The substitute resolution could refer to the Quartet Statement of March 19, 2010, which called for "the resumption without preconditions of direct bilateral negotiations that resolve all final status issues, as previously agreed by the parties."

A one-sided resolution not balanced in this way would violate the injunction that Secretary Clinton laid down on December 10, to "stop trying to assign blame for ... failure, and focus instead on what [the parties] need to do to make these efforts succeed." As a presidential candidate, Obama called on the Bush administration to veto resolutions that blame only Israel. But now that he is president, Obama is not going to have any leverage to prevent one-sided resolutions unless he overcomes the veto reticence he has shown until now and finds the courage to threaten his first veto there. Blocking this Palestinian maneuver against Israel at the UN Security Council could also help persuade the Israeli public that Obama's commitment to Israel is more than rhetoric.

Steven J. Rosen served for 23 years as foreign policy director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and was a defendant in the recently dismissed AIPAC case. He is now director of the Washington Project at the Middle East Forum.