Netanyahu defends pulling ambassadors over UN resolution

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has defended his harsh diplomatic response to the United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Jewish settlement activity, as Israel's war of words with the outgoing Obama administration intensified.

"Israel is a country with national pride, and we do not turn the other cheek," he said. "This is a responsible, measured and vigorous response, the natural response of a healthy people that is making it clear to the nations of the world that what was done at the UN is unacceptable to us."

Defending his decision to withdraw ambassadors from New Zealand and Senegal, to cancel planned diplomatic visits to all the states which voted for the resolution, and to withdraw funding from the UN, Mr Netanyahu denied opposition claims that his response would only increase Israel’s diplomatic isolation.

Security Council resolution 2334, adopted on Friday, condemned Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem as a "flagrant violation under international law" and an obstacle to peace. The council approved it 14 to 0, with the United States choosing not use its veto, as it has in the past.

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The Jerusalem municipality, undeterred by the resolution, is due to consider on Wednesday requests for construction permits for hundreds of new homes for Israelis in areas that Israel captured in 1967 and annexed to the city.

Israel's ambassador to the US Ron Dermer claimed that President Barack Obama's administration was actively involved in passing the resolution.

Evidence

“We have evidence for that. We will present that evidence to the new administration in the appropriate channels, and then they can decide whether they want to release it to the public.”

Mr Dermer went on to say that Obama “gave the Palestinians exactly what they wanted: he gave them the ammunition for a political, diplomatic and legal war against Israel, by not vetoing [the resolution].” Mr Obama’s deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes rejected the Israeli accusations of a diplomatic ambush.

“By definition it’s not an ambush when President Obama and secretary [of state John] Kerry have been saying in hundreds of conversations and in public comments that Israeli settlement activity was making the two-state solution unachievable over time.”

Opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog attacked Mr Netanyahu's response.

“Only two weeks ago, we heard the prime minister boast about his excellent foreign relations with various countries, including in Africa and Asia, and now, before our eyes, there has been a total collapse of Israeli foreign policy.”

Israel is already bracing itself for another diplomatic defeat when dozens of states will join the Palestinians at a Middle East peace conference in Paris on January 15th. Israel is boycotting the event, arguing that only bilateral talks can end the diplomatic impasse.

Defence minister Avigdor Lieberman compared the Paris peace conference to the Dreyfus affair in 1894 when a Jewish officer in the French army was falsely accused of treason, in one of the most notorious anti-Semitic incidents of modern times.

“This, what they are preparing in Paris, is the modern edition of the Dreyfus affair, only with one difference – this time, instead of one Jew on the defendant’s bench, it will be the entire nation of Israel and the entire state of Israel,” Mr Lieberman said.