Netanyahu Reportedly Reaching Out to Trump to Block More Anti-Israel Moves

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly reaching out to President-elect Donald Trump and the U.S. Congress in order to prevent the Obama administration from what the Israeli government fears is an American attempt to have the U.N. Security Council pass more resolutions against Israel by approving principles for a Palestinian state, The Times of Israel reports.

This comes after the Netanyahu government was angered that the Security Council on Friday condemned Israel’s settlement activities when the US failed to veto the resolution.

The Israeli prime minister held a 40-minute meeting with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro on Sunday evening after summoning him to explain why the United States abstained on the resolution, allowing it to pass. Netanyahu also summoned all the envoys of the other countries with representatives in Israel who voted for the resolution, which passed 14-0.

Israel says the measure is biased against Israel and is only an attempt by the Palestinians to delegitimize the Jewish state and avoid any direct negotiations. Critics of the resolution say that it will only harden positions and make an attempt at a peaceful solution to the conflict much more difficult.

Israel’s Channel 2 reported that Netanyahu is reaching out to the president-elect, as well as members of Congress, in an attempt to have the new administration make clear that a Trump White House will economically harm those nations which vote against Israel in future U.N. resolutions.

In another sign of Israel’s defiance of the resolution, the Jerusalem Municipality will this week reportedly approve new housing in large Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem that were built after Israel captured the areas in the 1967 war.

To make his point even more emphatically, Netanyahu went to the Western Wall on Sunday evening, the second night of Hanukkah, to light the menorah there, The Jerusalem Post reported. The Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, is the outer wall of the Second Temple which stood on the plateau above it until destroyed by the Romans 2,000 years ago, and was part of the territory Israel won in the 1967 war and is thus covered by the resolution. A Jewish temple first stood on the site 3,000 years ago, long before Islam, or Christianity, existed.

Netanyahu points out on his Facebook page that Hanukkah celebrates the Jewish nation’s victory over the occupying Greeks who defiled the Temple and that the Jewish homeland included areas that are over the pre-1967 lines

Netanyahu fears that Secretary of State John Kerry will set out parameters for a Palestinian state in a speech on the Middle East that he says he will deliver in the next few days and then have a resolution enshrining those principles adopted by the Security Council in the time Obama has left in office.

At Sunday’s weekly Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu publicly blamed Obama for the resolution’s passing, saying, "We have no doubt the Obama administration initiated [the resolution], stood behind it, coordinated the wording and demanded it be passed."

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