Israel: US should never have joined UN statement criticising settlements

In a rare public rebuke, Israel has said the US should have “never joined” a UN statement accusing settlement activities of “dangerously imperilling the viability” of the two-state solution. 

The UN Security Council issued a statement on Monday, expressing “deep concern and dismay” over Israel’s plans to legalise nine illegal settlement outposts in the West Bank and further build some 10,000 units in existing settlements.

The nine outposts are both illegal under international and Israeli law, some of which are built on private Palestinian land and Israeli military zones.

While the statement also condemned all terrorist activities and reminded the Palestinian Authority of its “obligation” to “renounce and confront terror,” Israel took offence to the part that described Israeli settlement activities as “dangerously imperilling the viability of the two-state solution based on the 1967 lines.”

Israel called the UN Security Council statement “one-sided”, claiming it “denies the rights of Jews to live in our historic homeland, fails to mention the Palestinian terror attacks in Jerusalem in which 10 Israeli civilians were murdered, ignores the Palestinian Authority’s grotesque pay-for-slay policy which subsidises the murder of Jews & belittles the evil of antisemitism, which has resulted in the slaughter of millions.”

“The statement should never have been made and the United States should never have joined it,” a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office read.

The public rebuke is the latest trend of a growing disagreements between Israel and the US, after Prime Minister Netanyahu was re-elected in November last year.

U.S. ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, said he had told Netanyahu to “pump the brakes” on the government’s controversial judicial reform plan, causing several lawmakers, including Netanyahu, to push back.

Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Social Equality, Amichai Chikli, lashed out at Nides, telling him to “mind his own business,” while Netanyahu made a thinly veiled comment aimed at the U.S., saying “all democracies should respect the will of other free peoples, just as we respect their democratic decisions.”