UNITED NATIONS -- President Barack Obama's administration on Friday allowed the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution that condemned Israeli settlement construction on territory claimed by Palestinians.
Applause broke out in the 15-member Security Council's chambers after the vote on the measure, which passed 14-0, with the United States abstaining.
The administration's decision not to veto the measure broke a long-standing U.S. policy of serving as Israel's diplomatic shield at the world body.
Israel's ambassador, Danny Danon, denounced the measure and castigated the council members who had approved it.
"Would you ban the French from building in Paris?" he told them.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who had attempted in recent days to stop the measure from advancing to a vote, released a blistering denunciation afterward.
"Israel rejects this shameful anti-Israel resolution at the U.N. and will not abide by its terms," Netanyahu said in a statement. "At a time when the Security Council does nothing to stop the slaughter of half a million people in Syria, it disgracefully gangs up on the one true democracy in the Middle East, Israel, and calls the Western Wall 'occupied territory.'"
By contrast, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat praised the result as a "victory for the justice of the Palestinian cause." He said President-elect Donald Trump's choice was now between "international legitimacy" or siding with "settlers and extremists."
The vote came a day after Trump personally intervened to keep the measure, proposed by Egypt, from coming up for a vote Thursday as scheduled. Trump's aides said he had spoken to Netanyahu. Both men also spoke to the Egyptian president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. Egypt postponed the vote.
But in a show of mounting exasperation, four other countries on the Security Council -- Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal and Venezuela -- all of them temporary members with rotating two-year seats, put the resolution up for a vote Friday afternoon.
It is the first resolution on the settlements to pass in 36 years, Malaysia's U.N. Ambassador Ramlan Bin Ibrahim said.
The resolution condemned Israeli housing construction in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank as a "flagrant violation under international law" that was "dangerously imperiling the viability" of a future peace settlement establishing a Palestinian state. Some 600,000 Israelis live in those territories.
While the resolution doesn't impose sanctions on Israel, it establishes the world's disapproval of the settlements. A reversal would require a follow-up vote.
Most of the world is opposed to Israel's construction of Jewish settlements in lands it seized in the 1967 Mideast War. The primary holdout at the U.N. has been the United States, which sees settlements as illegitimate but has traditionally used its veto power as a permanent member of the Security Council to block such resolutions on the grounds that Israeli-Palestinian disputes should be addressed through negotiation.
Netanyahu ordered several diplomatic steps in retaliation, recalling his nation's ambassadors to New Zealand and Senegal for consultations and canceling a planned January visit to Israel by Senegal's foreign minister. He also ended Israeli aid programs to the African country.
The departing Obama administration has been highly critical of Israel's settlement building, describing it as an impediment to a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has long been the official U.S. position, regardless of the party in power.
Trump's comments on the resolution amounted to his most direct intervention on U.S. foreign policy during his transition to power. Minutes after the Security Council vote was announced, Trump made his anger known in a Twitter posting: "As to the U.N., things will be different after Jan. 20th."
U.S. Justifies Abstention
The U.S. ambassador, Samantha Power, portrayed the abstention as consistent with the U.S. disapproval of settlement-building, but she also criticized countries at the United Nations for treating Israel unfairly. She said the United States remained committed to its "steadfast support" for Israel and reminded the council that Israel received an enormous amount of U.S. military aid.
Power quoted a 1982 statement from then-President Ronald Reagan that declared that the U.S. "will not support the use of any additional land for the purpose of settlements."
"That has been the policy of every administration, Republican and Democrat, since before President Reagan and all the way through to the present day," Power said.
Power said the United States chose not to veto the resolution, as it had done to a similar measure under Obama in 2011, because settlement building had accelerated so much that it had put the two-state solution in jeopardy and because the peace process had gone nowhere.
"Today, the Security Council reaffirmed its established consensus that settlements have no legal validity," she said. "The United States has been sending a message that settlements must stop privately and publicly for nearly five decades."
In a statement, Secretary of State John Kerry said the vote was guided by one principle: "To preserve the possibility of the two-state solution."
Powers also rebuked Palestinian leaders for "too often" failing to condemn violence against Israeli civilians. But she also directed some of her remarks to Netanyahu.
"One cannot simultaneously champion expanding Israeli settlements and champion a viable two-state solution that would end the conflict," she said, arguing that the settlements have undermined Israel's security.
Israel's ambassador, Danon, who had exhorted the U.S. delegation to block the measure, expressed his anger in a statement that looked forward to a change in policy under Trump.
"It was to be expected that Israel's greatest ally would act in accordance with the values that we share and that they would have vetoed this disgraceful resolution," he said.
The resolution also includes a nod to Israel and its backers by condemning "all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror, as well as all acts of provocation, incitement and destruction." That language is aimed at Palestinian leaders, whom Israel accuses of encouraging attacks on Israeli civilians.
Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls Gaza and is deemed a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel, expressed appreciation to the Security Council.
"We praise the countries that voted for the resolution," said Hazem Kassem, a spokesman for the group. "We emphasize the need to turn such a resolution into action, not only to halt settlements but to eradicate Israel's occupation in all its forms."
Lawmakers Respond
In Washington, Republican lawmakers were already threatening consequences.
"This is absolutely shameful," House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said in a statement, promising that next year, "our unified Republican government will work to reverse the damage done by this administration, and rebuild our alliance with Israel."
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., said abstaining made the United States "complicit in this outrageous attack" on Israel, and predicted the resolution "will serve as yet a another roadblock to peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and embolden the enemies of Israel."
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who heads the Senate appropriations panel in charge of U.S. payments to the global body, said he would "form a bipartisan coalition to suspend or significantly reduce" such funding. He said countries receiving U.S. aid also could be penalized for backing the effort.
After the vote, Graham tweeted that "Obama-Kerry foreign policy has gone from naive and foolish to flat-out reckless. With friends like these #Israel doesn't need any enemies."
Reaction to the resolution also illustrated fissures among American Jews regarding Israeli policy. Some, such as the World Jewish Congress and American Jewish Committee, denounced the resolution, calling it a one-sided measure that would not help the peace process. Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, said in a statement: "It is also disconcerting and unfortunate that the United States, Israel's greatest ally, chose to abstain rather than veto this counterproductive text."
Other groups that have grown increasingly critical of the Israeli government's approach to the peace process applauded the resolution and the Obama administration's decision not to block it.
J Street, a Washington-based organization that advocates a two-state solution, said the resolution "conveys the overwhelming support of the international community, including Israel's closest friends and allies, for the two-state solution, and their deep concern over the deteriorating status quo between Israelis and Palestinians and the lack of meaningful progress toward peace."
In a Hanukkah message Friday, Obama didn't mention the matter. He referred to Israel once, noting that Jews there and around the world would soon "gather to light their Hanukkah menorahs, display them proudly in the window and recall the miracles of both ancient times and the present day."
Information for this article was contributed by Somini Sengupta, Rick Gladstone, Peter Baker and Mark Landler of The New York Times; by Edith M. Lederer, Bradley Klapper, Josef Federman and Josh Lederman of The Associated Press; and by Carol Morello, Ruth Eglash, Karoun Demirjian and David Nakamura of The Washington Post
A Section on 12/24/2016