Obama has nearly ruled out UN action on Israel, US officials say

Rasa - US President Barack Obama has decided to abandon any last-ditch effort to push for peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians during his last weeks in the White House, according to a new report.

News ID: 425441

Date: 01 December 2016 - 23:05

RNA - The outgoing president has ruled out putting pressure on Tel Aviv over the stalled negotiations with the Palestinians, the AP reported Thursday, citing Obama administration officials.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Obama had been thinking about laying out his favorite solution for the long-running conflict in a major speech. However, he seemed to have shelved the plan forever, they noted.

Obama has also dropped support for a United Nations resolution that would have included parameters for his ideal peace agreement.

The officials said Obama did not want to limit Israel’s options in the negotiations and strengthen the Palestinian side.

Frustrated by a lack of progress in the peace process and Donald Trump’s presidential election victory over his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on November 8 were the main reasons that prompted Obama to scrap his plans for any action, according to the report.

In anticipation of an easy victory for Clinton, the Obama administration had come up with a list of possible measures to maintain peace through a two-state solution.

Obama has repeatedly opposed the Israeli settlement-building in the occupied Palestinian lands and Clinton was expected to ease that tone.

The first African American president knew that if he took any actions to limit Israel, it would be nullified by the Trump administration, specially since the Republican Party had won the majority in both chambers of Congress.

Despite this, there was still a chance that Obama would address ongoing conflicts in the Middle East in a limited way, without proposing any peace solutions for the Palestine-Israel issue, the report added.

The news came days after the former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton warned Obama against taking any action that could hurt Israel.

“There is a lot of speculation over in Turtle Bay at UN headquarters about resolutions that recognize a Palestinian state or that try and set a boundary for Israel based on the 1967 ceasefire lines,” he said in a radio interview. “I think that’d be very inadvisable for the president to do that.”

Meanwhile, former US President Jimmy Carter wrote in a recent article that Obama and the Democratic Party have “nothing to lose” if recognition is extended to Palestine in the final days of the administration.

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