‘We will overcome this evil decree,’ Israel tells UNSC after anti-settlement vote
Jewish state ‘will continue to reclaim the land of our forefathers,’ Ambassador Danon vows, after US chooses not to prevent resolution branding settlements illegal
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations on Friday condemned the UN Security Council for voting through a resolution demanding a halt to all settlement activity, branding the motion “an evil decree” that would merely provide further excuses for the Palestinians to continue to reject Israel’s right to exist.
Speaking after the Council voted 14-0 in favor of Resolution 2334, which brands settlements illegal, Danny Danon told the packed chamber that this was a “dark day for this council.” The UN body wasted its time, in a “peak of hypocrisy,” to condemn Israel “for building homes in the historic homeland of the Jewish people” even as thousands were being massacred in neighboring Syria, he said.
Israel, said Danon, had implored the council “not to believe the lies in this resolution.” By approving it, “you have in fact voted no to negotiations, you have voted no to progress and a chance for better lives for Israelis and Palestinians, and you have voted no to the possibility of peace.”
Danon called the resolution the latest in “the long and shameful list of anti-Israel UN resolutions” and said it would encourage Palestinian incitement. “Today’s vote will be a victory for terror,” he said, “a victory for hatred and violence.”
Expressing hope that the UN would “turn a new page” under its next secretary-general, Danon castigated the Security Council for a resolution that he said denied Israel the right to build in its own capital. What right did its members have, he asked, to try to prevent the Jewish people from building homes in their own land?
“We will overcome this evil decree,” he vowed, holding up a Bible and citing thousands of years of Jewish history in the Holy Land. “We have full confidence in the justice of our cause… We will continue to be a Jewish state proudly reclaiming the land of our forefathers… where King David ruled from Jerusalem.”
