In news certain to rattle Israeli society, several cabinet ministers inside Israel’s government claim that President Obama has formally notified Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. may plan a major break in relations with the Jewish state.
The U.S. would reportedly start voting with Israel’s enemies at the United Nations if the Jewish state does not capitulate to various Obama administration diktats. Such demands would pose existential risks to the survival of the Jewish state, such that no elected Israeli leader could possibly accept them.
According to a cabinet minister interviewed by an Algemeiner Journal reporter, “The prime minister told colleagues in recent days … that his office’s understanding of the issue and the government’s take on it is that the Americans will not cast a veto against a resolution that reaches the Security Council.”
If true, and if the White House does issue about-face orders to the United States delegation at the UN, Israel would find itself more isolated and diplomatically exposed than ever since its founding in 1948. If the U.S. stops exercising its vetos of anti-Israel resolutions in the Security Council, Israel would find itself exposed to mandatory, punitive, perhaps even devastating international sanctions, boycotts, and isolation. A UN Security Council resolution under active consideration now would demand that Israel withdraw completely from all territories acquired in the 1967 Six Day War no later than 2016 or face binding and crippling international sanctions.
More than 75% of the territory captured by Israel in 1967 was already “returned” to Egypt as part of the Peace Treaty of 1979. Other territories include Jerusalem, Israel’s capital city; Judea and Samaria, commonly referred to as the West Bank, the ancient heart of biblical Israel; and the Gaza Strip, from which Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005.
Officials with the Palestinian Authority claim they have already secured seven of the necessary nine “yes” votes needed to pass a resolution in the 15-member Security Council. A UN Security Council resolution can be vetoed by one of the five permanent members of the body, of which the U.S. is one.
Just over a month ago, President Obama said that his White House meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister “gives us an opportunity once again to reaffirm the unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel, and our ironclad commitment to making sure that Israel is secure.”
Should reports be true, bipartisan reaction from the U.S. Congress is certain to be ferociously opposed to the President’s move.