US invites nations that abstained or rejected UN vote to reception

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley on Thursday invited representatives from nations which did not support the General Assembly vote rejecting US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital to a January 3 reception.

In an email obtained by Fox News, Haley invited those 65 countries “to a reception to thank you for your friendship to the United States.”

The General Assembly passed the resolution condemning US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, with 128s nation in favor, nine voting against, 35 abstaining and 21 no-shows.

In a tweet, Haley thanked “these countries for not falling to the irresponsible ways of the @UN,” and posted a list of the 65 countries who did not support the resolution.

We appreciate these countries for not falling to the irresponsible ways of the @UN: pic.twitter.com/a0hUTepD8H

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories

Newsletter email address Get it

By signing up, you agree to the terms

— Archive: Ambassador Nikki Haley (@AmbNikkiHaley) December 21, 2017

Haley said the resolution, which passed with a large majority, was an attack on the United States and its right to exercise its own sovereign policy.

She warned that the motion could cause the US to pull funding from the UN.

“The United States will remember this day,” she said, when it was attacked in the General Assembly for exercising its sovereignty. It “will remember” that the US was again asked to make the largest contribution of any country to the UN, she said, and it will remember the vote when other countries come to the US for help.

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the UN, told Fox News that “the Trump administration needs to use this as a fulcrum to look at funding of the UN system more broadly.”

At an emergency session, the UN General Assembly voted for a resolution reaffirming that Jerusalem was an issue that must be resolved through negotiations and that any decision on its status has no legal effect and must be rescinded.

“When we make generous contributions to the UN, we also have expectation that we will be respected,” Haley said. “We are being asked to pay for the dubious privilege of being disrespected.”

Haley said she sometimes wondered why Israel, so unfairly treated for so long by the UN, remained a member of the organization. But, she said, she realized it needed to stand up for itself.

“America will put our embassy in Jerusalem,” she stressed, so the vote would have no impact on policy. But it would influence how Americans look at the UN and its component countries, she said.

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki, addressing the assembly as the session got underway, appealed for support and referenced America’s warning that it was “taking names” among countries that oppose it at the UN.

“This organization is now undergoing an unprecedented test,” al-Malki said.

“History records names, it remembers names — the names of those who stand by what is right and the names of those who speak falsehood. Today we are seekers of rights and peace.”

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, said that the US decision to recognize Jerusalem “constitutes an aggression towards the Palestinian people.

“This decision will not affect the status of the city,” he says. “But it does affect the status of the United States as a mediator of peace.”

Mansour said Palestinians would “not be threatened” by Trump’s warning he could cut foreign aid to countries that support the motion.

“We call on you to reject the blackmail and intimidation,” he says. “Those who want peace must vote for this resolution.”

Israeli envoy Danny Danon slammed supporters of the resolution as “puppets” controlled by their “Palestinian masters.”

He rejected the vote as “nothing more than a performance of delusion.”

The Palestinians, he said, “know this won’t create jobs for their people. They know it won’t provide better healthcare for the people of Ramallah. It tells the Palestinians that they can continue to reject peace.”

Instead, he said, “they incite hate and carry out terror attacks against Israel…If you vote for (the motion), you are sanctioning it.”

Danon said he believed the nations of the world would all eventually recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

“Forty-two years ago this body adopted a different shameful resolution equating Zionism with racism. It took 16 long years for that hateful resolution to be revoked,” he said.

“I have no doubt that today’s resolution will also end up eventually in the trash bin of history. I have no doubt that the day will come when the entire international community will finally recognize Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the State of Israel.”

The Iranian ambassador to the UN told the Assembly that “the Israeli occupations lie at the center of all crises and conflicts in the Middle East.”

Urging all countries to vote for the resolution, he called Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital “politically incorrect, illegal and unlawful.”

The measure was sent to the General Assembly after it was vetoed by the United States at the Security Council on Monday; all 14 other council members voted in favor.

The resolution, which is non-binding, was expected to pass easily despite US pressure on countries to abstain, vote against it or simply not turn up for the vote.

Trump’s decision on December 6 to recognize the city as Israel’s capital broke with the international diplomatic consensus, unleashed protests across the Muslim world and prompted a flurry of appeals to the United Nations.

In the speech, Trump insisted that after repeated failures to achieve peace a new approach was long overdue, describing his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the seat of Israel’s government as merely based on reality.

Trump stressed that he was not specifying the boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in the city, and called for no change in the status quo at the city’s holy sites. The move was hailed by Netanyahu and by leaders across much of the Israeli political spectrum.

Trump later warned that Washington would closely watch how nations voted, suggesting there could even be reprisals for countries that back the motion which was put forward by Yemen and Turkey on behalf of Arab and Muslim countries.

“They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then they vote against us,” Trump said at the White House.

“Well, we’re watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We’ll save a lot. We don’t care.”

AFP contributed to this report.