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Why This UN Resolution Was Different
(Commentary) Jonathan S. Tobin - UN Security Council Resolution 2334 was the culmination of an eight-year effort to distance the U.S. from Israel. That process began in January 2009, when the new president openly stated that one of his top foreign policy priorities was to create more "daylight" between the two allies. It continued through years of ginned up fights with Netanyahu over settlements, borders, Jerusalem, and the president's push for a rapprochement with Iran that culminated in the nuclear deal in 2015. While previous resolutions unfairly criticized the Jewish state, none of them specifically labeled the Jewish presence in territory Israel took control of in the 1967 Six-Day War as illegal. It means that hundreds of thousands of Jews living in decades-old Jewish neighborhoods in the city of Jerusalem or in settlement blocs that even Obama has conceded would remain inside Israel in the event of a peace treaty are now international outlaws. It will put air in the sails of an anti-Semitic BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement that had seemed to be losing ground in recent years. Now, for the first time, it can claim to have the backing of the UN. Under the terms of this resolution, Jewish holy places in Jerusalem are considered to be Palestinian. This is an endorsement of the vicious Palestinian campaign at UNESCO and other UN bodies to deny Jewish history and religion by claiming Jerusalem's holy places are exclusively Muslim. Moreover, it removes any incentive for the Palestinian Authority to budge from its refusal to negotiate peace with Israel. In effect, Obama, who has claimed to be a champion of the peace process, has effectively killed it.