US envoy Dan Shapiro tells Israel’s Channel 10 television that the US was not behind the UN resolution condemning settlements that passed on Friday, saying the decision not to veto the resolution did not stem from any hostility towards the Israeli government.
“We understand why it hurts Israelis to hear such harsh things. The timing [of the vote] came from other countries, and was not revenge,” says Shapiro in Hebrew, when asked why Obama chose now to make a stance on Israeli-Palestinian peace, with just weeks left of his presidency. Obama and Netanyahu have had a notoriously strained relationship over the past eight years.
Shapiro also dismisses an Egyptian report of a secret meeting between American and Palestinian officials in which they planned the text of the resolution.
“I heard there is evidence that the US was behind the decision and I don’t believe it,” he says. “The document published by the Egyptian newspaper does not prove anything; the meeting between the US and the Palestinians described in the documents did not take place. We did not make the decision not to veto [the resolution] until we got the final text of the draft resolution in the Security Council,” he says.
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From the Liveblog of
Thursday, December 29, 2016
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