In a New York Times article entitled "Trump Pressures Obama Over U.N. Resolution on Israeli Settlements," Peter Baker and Somini Sengupta write:
"President-elect Donald J. Trump thrust himself into one of the world’s most polarizing debates on Thursday by pressuring President Obama to veto a United Nations resolution critical of Israel, the newly elected leader’s most direct intervention in foreign policy during his transition to power.
Mr. Trump spoke out after Israeli officials contacted his team for help in blocking the draft resolution condemning settlement construction even as they lobbied its sponsor, Egypt. Within a couple of hours, Egypt withdrew the resolution, at least temporarily, and its president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, called Mr. Trump to discuss how 'to establish true peace in the Middle East,' according to an aide to the president-elect.
. . . .
Frustrated by two failed efforts to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians during his tenure, Mr. Obama has been considering an effort to lay out an American framework during his final days in office. Palestinian leaders and their allies had hoped he would allow the anti-settlement resolution at the United Nations to pass as an expression of frustration at Israeli policies."
Sorry, Obama, but the Egyptians are unwilling to anger an unsuppressed unpredictable president-elect, and as Mark Moyar concluded in a New York Times op-ed entitled "The World Fears Trump’s America. That’s a Good Thing.":
"As the world’s most powerful country, and the only one whose leadership can safeguard the world order, the United States must care more about whether it commands international respect than whether it is loved by international elites. The incoming administration appears poised to return the United States to this precept after an eight-year drought. Americans and America’s allies should be relieved. America’s enemies are right to be afraid."
Or as Niccolo Machiavelli wrote some 500 years ago:
"It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."
At least as regards the Middle East, Machiavelli was right.
This was a deliberate plot by Obama/Kerry, deployed after the 2016 election, to insure this resolution came to a vote, using New Zealand:
ReplyDelete"NZ talks to Kerry about UN Security Council resolution on Israel-Palestine conflict" 8:01 PM Sunday Nov 13, 2016
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11747382
"One of the closed-door discussions between United States Secretary of State John Kerry and the New Zealand Government today was a potential resolution by the United Nations Security Council on a two-state solution for the Israel - Palestinian conflict.
After the talks, Foreign Minister Murray McCully even raised the possibility of the US or New Zealand sponsoring a resolution.
"It is a conversation we are engaged in deeply and we've spent some time talking to Secretary Kerry about where the US might go on this. ..."
[No mention of this topic at the Kerry-PM Key presser on November 13]:
"Press Availability With New Zealand Prime Minister John Key John Kerry Secretary of State Premier House Wellington, New Zealand November 13, 2016 " https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2016/11/264266.htm
[Hours later:] “The 2016 Kaikoura earthquake was a magnitude 7.8 (Mw) earthquake in the South Island of New Zealand that occurred two minutes after midnight on 14 November 2016 NZDT (11:02 on 13 November UTC). …
The large magnitude of the quake makes it second in magnitude to only one New Zealand earthquake since European settlement of the country ..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Kaikoura_earthquake
[Perhaps the Kaikoura earthquake was a coincidence, not fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. The plot against Israel went forward, with New Zealand, not Egypt]