UN General Assembly Condemns U.S Decree On Jerusalem

A lopsided majority of United Nations members rebuked the United States on Thursday, denouncing its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and ignoring President Trump’s threats to retaliate by cutting aid to countries voting against it.

In a collective act of defiance toward Washington, the United Nations General Assembly voted 128 to 9, with 35 abstentions, for a resolution demanding that the United States rescind its Dec. 6 declaration on Jerusalem, the contested holy city.

The resolution is nonbinding and therefore largely symbolic, but the vote indicated the extent to which the Trump administration’s departure from a 50-year international consensus on Jerusalem’s status has unsettled world politics and contributed to America’s diplomatic isolation.

Major allies like Britain, France, Germany and Japan voted for the resolution, though some allies, like Australia and Canada, abstained.

Carrying out a promise to his base of supporters, Mr. Trump upended decades of American policy with his decision on Jerusalem, aggravating an emotional issue that has festered since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, when the Israelis occupied the entire city.

 

Many Security Council resolutions since then, which have the force of international law, have warned that Jerusalem’s status is unresolved, that claims of sovereignty by Israel are invalid and that the issue must be settled in negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.

The new resolution raised questions about whether Mr. Trump would deliver on his threat on Wednesday to withhold American aid from countries that broke ranks with the United States. While he has significant legal latitude to do so, experts said it would be very difficult to substantially cut off countries like Egypt and Jordan that are strategic partners of the United States in the Middle East.

Israel denounced Thursday’s vote, likening it to a 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism, a decision that was repealed after 16 years because of intensive American pressure that included withholding American dues payments to the United Nations.

“It’s shameful that this meeting is even taking place,” Israel’s envoy to the United Nations, Danny Danon, told the General Assembly. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a Facebook post: “Israel completely rejects this preposterous resolution. Jerusalem is our capital. Always was, always will be.”

The American ambassador, Nikki R. Haley, called the vote “null and void,” declaring that “no vote in the United Nations will make any difference” on the United States’ plans to move its embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, which she called “the right thing to do.”

“We will remember it when we are called upon once again to make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations,” she said of the vote. “And we will remember when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.”

The United States Mission to the United Nations quickly issued a statement seeking to portray the outcome as a victory because the vote could have been even more lopsided. It cited the 35 abstentions, coupled with 21 delegations that were absent, representing a significant chunk of the total membership of 193.

“It’s clear that many countries prioritized their relationship with the United States over an unproductive attempt to isolate us for a decision that was our sovereign right to make,” the mission said in the statement emailed to journalists.

But American Jewish organizations that strongly support Israel saw nothing positive about the outcome of the vote. David Harris, the chief executive officer of the American Jewish Committee, said he was “dismayed by the overwhelming support of U.N. Member States for the General Assembly resolution condemning U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.”

Stalwart American allies like France and Britain sought to frame their position as merely reaffirming the Security Council resolutions on Jerusalem dating back to 1967, which are still in force, and to play down the isolation of the United States.

“It is more important than ever to rally the international community around the agreed parameters of the peace process,” said France’s ambassador, François Delattre, “and this of course includes the United States, as everyone is aware of its particular role and influence on this issue.”

The decisive rejection of the American shift of position on Jerusalem, on the world’s biggest diplomatic stage, was a setback for a president who is still looking for a major foreign achievement after nearly a year on the job. It also appeared to deepen the tension between Mr. Trump and the United Nations, which he once likened to a social club.