US Opposes UNGA Resolution Calling on Israel to Return Golan Heights

By Jason Ditz       
In a 151-2 vote, the UN General Assembly has voted to call for the end of the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights, and calls for the territory to be returned to Syria. Israel, as usual, voted against the resolution, but the US also voted no for the first time ever.
The resolution is passed regularly in the UN, though Israel has claimed to have annexed the Golan Heights and most officials rule out returning it to Syria. The US vote is interesting, as historically, the US has always abstained from such votes, and the US has never recognized Israel’s annexation of Golan.
Ambassador Nikki Haley said the vote was because they considered the resolution to have an anti-Israel bias. The resolution, however, appears identical to what it always says. The change seems wholly within the administration.
The US vote does not necessarily amount to the US endorsing the annexation of Golan, though it will almost certainly be seen as doing so. Haley suggested this would be the new normal, and that the US would not abstain from “useless annual votes” on Israeli matters.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

George Soros at the Davos Forum

Dear Friends and Colleagues,   I thought you would be interested in reading George's remarks he delivered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this evening.   Best regards, Michael Vachon   George Soros Remarks delivered at the World Economic Forum Davos, Switzerland January 25, 2018 The current moment in history Good evening. It has become something of an annual Davos tradition for me to give an overview of the current state of the world. I was planning half an hour for my remarks and half an hour for questions, but my speech has turned out to be closer to an hour. I attribute this to the severity of the problems confronting us. After I’ve finished, I’ll open it up for your comments and questions. So prepare yourselves. *** I find the current moment in history rather painful. Open societies are in crisis, and various forms of dictatorships and mafia states, exemplified by Putin’s Russia, are on the rise. In the United States, President Trump would
Read more

Defining the Biden Doctrine

  In his first major foreign-policy speech as U.S. president, Joe Biden declared to the world that America was back. The international sigh of relief was almost audible amid hopes that former President Donald Trump’s disruptive style was a relic. Biden has pursued an ambitious agenda to repair alliances and forge new ones, curb corruption, arrest democratic backsliding, and tackle climate change, all while managing the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, Russian threats to Ukraine, and escalating tensions with China.  It hasn’t all been plain sailing. The decision to withdraw remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan precipitated the collapse of the country’s government and chaos in Kabul as hundreds of thousands of people fled the Taliban. Plans to share nuclear submarine technology with Australia, at the expense of Canberra’s submarine deal with Paris, soured trans-Atlantic relations.  Ahead of the anniversary of Biden’s inauguration,  Foreign Policy ’s Amy Mackinnon spoke with one of t
Read more