UNITED NATIONS/WASHINGTON (IPS) — Amid unprecedented political ferment in the Arab world, the United States used its veto last week  to block a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s continuing annexation of Palestinian territory and calling for a freeze on settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

    Poignantly, this was the first veto cast under the administration of President Barack Obama, a move that reflects over a decade of U.S. intervention in Security Council decisions regarding the Middle East: of the 14 vetoes cast by the five permanent members of the Council since 2000, nine have come from the U.S., acting alone to obstruct Israel-related resolutions.

    Sponsored by more than 100 member states, the resolution received 14 votes for, one against, and no abstentions. All of Washington’s closest European allies, notably Britain, France, Germany, and Portugal, voted in favor of the resolution.

    Nonetheless, Washington’s ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, insisted that the resolution was counterproductive.

    “This is the Israelis’ and Palestinians’ conflict, and even the best-intentioned outsiders cannot resolve it for them,” she said during the debate. “Unfortunately, this draft resolution risks hardening the positions of both sides.”

    Addressing the press by teleconference following the Council’s meeting, Rice expressed “deep regret” that an alternative resolution put forward by the U.S., which critics have called a watered-down version of the original draft, was not accepted and is no longer viable.

    Obama himself attempted to persuade the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw the resolution in advance of a vote, and instead throw its support behind the alternate U.S.-backed resolution before the Council.

    But critics assailed the veto and the rationale given by Rice, noting that the resolution was entirely consistent with Washington’s long-held official views regarding the territories Israel conquered in the 1967 war.

    Washington has never recognized Israel’s “annexation” of the Golan Heights or East Jerusalem, and a 1978 State Department legal opinion found that Israeli settlements were “inconsistent with international law,” specifically the Fourth Geneva Convention — an assessment that has never been repudiated or revised.

    During an ultimately unsuccessful effort to persuade Israel to stop building settlements, Obama himself has repeatedly stressed that Washington does not accept their “legitimacy.”

    “What happened today is not just about an American veto of a resolution that is consistent with longstanding U.S. policy,” said Debra DeLee, president of Americans for Peace Now (APN), a Zionist peace group.

    “The fact that the Palestinians went ahead and brought the resolution to a vote demonstrates the degree to which the Palestinians and the international community have lost faith in the peace process, and in U.S. leadership of that process,” she added, calling on Obama to take “dramatic action,” such as putting forward its own plan for a final settlement to the conflict.

    Critics also warned that Washington’s veto was likely to be particularly costly throughout an Arab world at a moment when autocratic allies are being challenged – and, in the case of Tunisia and Egypt, overthrown — by popular movements that are keenly sensitive to double standards.

    “This veto hardly resonates positively or constructively in an Arab world facing increased popular demands for adherence to democratic legitimacy, the rule of law, and international legitimacy,” according to Daniel Levy, co-director of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation and a former Israeli peace negotiator.

    “Many will claim that it reeks of hypocrisy and suggests that America will have a tricky time balancing its alliance with an Israel that is still occupying Palestinians and an Arab world in which democracy and freedom gain more traction,” he added.

    Nonetheless, the veto was hailed by the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most influential of a number of major Jewish organizations that are often referred to as the “Israel lobby.” AIPAC and other lobby groups that are closely associated with the Israeli government, such as The Israel Project, waged a full-court press on Congress and the administration to ensure Washington vetoed the resolution.

    “Far too often, the United Nations has served as an open forum to isolate and delegitimize Israel – America’s lone stable, democratic ally in the Middle East,” it said in a statement. “AIPAC hopes the administration continues to reject any further attempts by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to isolate the Jewish state.

    “Moving forward, the PA must understand that the only path to a two-state solution …is through direct negotiations with Israel,” it said.

    But others strongly disagreed with that analysis, stressing that the veto had much more to do with domestic politics than with clear-eyed calculation of what would best promote a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

    “The decision to veto the UN resolution condemning Israel’s illegal settlement program is just more evidence that U.S. Middle East policy is driven not by strategic interests or moral commitments, but by a cynical desire to appease a domestic interest group,” said Stephen Walt, a prominent international-relations professor at Harvard University and co-author of the controversial 2007 book, “The Israel Lobby.”

    “And by caving in to the Israel lobby (again), Obama has proven that he is in fact no friend of Israel, because his decision merely keeps that country on a course that threatens its long term future,” he told IPS. “Today’s vote is a victory for the Israel lobby, but not for the United States or Israel.”

    Indeed, as pointed out by several prominent former senior officials who served in top government and diplomatic positions over some 35 years, in a letter circulated in Washington last month, the rapid growth in the number of Jewish settlers living on Palestinian territory since the Oslo peace process was launched in 1993 made prospects for its fulfillment increasingly doubtful.

    “There are today over half a million Israelis living beyond the 1967 line – greatly complicating the realization of a two-state solution,” wrote Council on Foreign Relations Chair, former U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills, former UN Ambassador Thomas Pickering, and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, in a timely appeal for a U.S. abstention.

    “America’s credibility in a crucial region of the world is on the line — a region in which hundreds of thousands of our troops are deployed and where we face the greatest threats and challenges to our security. This vote is an American national security interest vote par excellence. We urge you to do the right thing,” it concluded.

    In presenting the resolution to the Council, Lebanon’s ambassador recounted the many rulings and resolutions, including the mandates of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the International Court of Justice, which declare as a war crime the transfer, by an occupying power, of its own population into occupied territory.

    That was echoed by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), which accused the Obama administration of undermining international law and hypocrisy.

    “President Obama wants to tell the Arab world in his speeches that he opposes settlements, but he won’t let the Security Council tell Israel to stop them in a legally binding way,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East director. “What’s needed from the Obama administration is a clear and consistent message that settlements on occupied territory are illegal and must be dismantled.”

    Following the vote, that caught few off guard, the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the UN declared, “The message sent today may be one that only encourages Israeli intransigence and impunity. This must be remedied, otherwise Israel’s illegal, reckless and expansionist campaign will put into jeopardy our collective goal: the two-state solution for peace, of an independent and viable State of Palestine, living side by side with Israel on the basis of the 1967 borders.”