Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
The United States House of Representatives voted in a resolution that rebukes the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 and claims the resolution is an “obstacle to peace” between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
The House voted in House Resolution 11 with 342 in favor to 80 against. The resolution was introduced by Republican representative Ed Royce from New York and Democratic representative Elliot Engel, both of whom serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee, with a co-sponsorship of 105 members of House.
The House resolution rejects the United Nations resolutions call to “to impose solutions to final status issues, or are one-sided and anti-Israel, reversing decades of bipartisan agreement” and claims that this “undermines the prospect of Israelis and Palestinians resuming productive, direct negotiations.”
The resolution also points out the dangers of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction against the State of Israel, stating that it “contributes to the politically motivated acts of boycott, divestment from, and sanctions against Israel and represents a concerted effort to extract concessions from Israel outside of direct negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians, which must be actively rejected.”
The resolution also addresses future efforts targeting the State of Israel, particularly France’s Middle East peace conference in January in which the international community is to meet to lay out the framework for a two-state solution. Israel has been clear that it will not attend or support efforts that are non-direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians with no preconditions.
The resolution states that “any future measures taken in international or outside organizations, including the United Nations Security Council or at the Paris conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict scheduled for January 15, 2017, to impose an agreement, or parameters for an agreement including the recognition of a Palestinian state, will set back the cause of peace, harm the security of Israel, run counter to the enduring bipartisan consensus on strengthening the United States-Israel relationship, and weaken support for such organizations.”
The resolution supports Israel’s right and demand for direct negotiations with the Palestinians. The resolution cites that “durable and sustainable peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians will come only through direct bilateral negotiations between the parties resulting in a Jewish, democratic state living side-by-side next to a demilitarized Palestinian state in peace and security.”
On the United States’ role in supporting the peace process, the resolution called for Israel’s ally to “work to facilitate serious, direct negotiations between the parties without preconditions toward a sustainable peace agreement,” and that the “United States Government should oppose and veto future United Nations Security Council resolutions that seek to impose solutions to final status issues, or are one-sided and anti-Israel.”
Finally, the resolution calls for a necessary change in Israel bias in the international community, specifically the United Nations. It calls for the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 to be “repealed” or “fundamentally altered” so that it “is no longer one-sided and anti-Israel” and so that “it allows all final status issues toward a two-state solution to be resolved through direct bilateral negotiations between the parties.”
Photo credit: By I, Aotearoa, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
Amir Tsarfati, a Jewish Christian, is the founder and president of Behold Israel, a news site to correct the scarcity in trustworthy reportage on issues and events impacting Israel, and to resolve the uncertainty about who or what to believe.
