A ‘Greater Israel’ in the Making?

The occupying colonial power in Palestine, the Israeli state, has been rightly condemned in the United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) Resolution 2334 of 23 December 2016 for all the measures Tel Aviv has taken to alter the “demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem.” As is well known, the Israeli state has aided and abetted the construction and expansion of settlements, the transfer of Israeli settlers, the confiscation of Palestinian land, the demolition of Palestinian homes and the displacement of Palestinian residents. Needless to say, all these measures are in flagrant violation of international law and a number of earlier United Nations (UN) resolutions. At the heart of these violations is the Israeli state’s concerted attempts to imperil the “viability of the two-State solution based on the 1967 lines.” But even as the resolution reiterates the ­demand that “Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, ­including East Jerusalem,” it is totally devoid of any means of enforcing what it has demanded. Indeed, UNSC Resolution 2334 (2016), like most other UN rulings, is toothless.

And yet, predictably, the Israeli government headed by ­Benjamin Netanyahu has been up in defiance of the resolution, resolving to move ahead with the construction of thousands of new homes in East Jerusalem and on the West Bank. What however unnerved the Israeli government was the Obama ­administration’s instruction to its UN ambassador to abstain rather than veto the Security Council resolution, for successive United States (US) presidential administrations since the late 1970s had consistently backed the Israeli state by blocking such resolutions with a veto. Indeed the resolution’s passage was smooth; it was by a 14–0 vote, with the US abstaining. The ­Israeli government was furious not only at the Obama administration, but also at the 14 yes-voter countries, severely castigating them for “ganging up” against Tel Aviv.