Kerry on Israel and the UN Security Council Resolution: An Alternate Universe

"Kerry's speech was already going to be drowned out by the global din around United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which passed in recent days after the U.S. abstained, and which among other things lumped Judaism's holiest sites in East Jerusalem together with the West Bank and declared all of them occupied Palestinian territory. It has been criticized first as a diplomatic gambit that detonated the peace process and, second, as an abandonment of Israel contrary to decades of U.S. diplomacy aimed at blocking international assaults on the Jewish state...

To address concerns that UNSCR 2334 blew apart the peace process, Kerry described it as in line with past Middle East-related resolutions. That version might have been a legitimate diplomatic achievement. But it's not the real Resolution 2334. The real Resolution 2334 describes all of East Jerusalem and the West Bank as occupied Palestinian territory. Nonetheless Kerry said that a previous resolution built to avoid exactly that conclusion, Resolution 242, was still 'enshrined in international law... and remains the basis for an agreement today.'...

To address concerns that the U.S. abandoned Israel in an unprecedented way by abstaining, Kerry sketched a version of past U.S. diplomacy where the abstention was nothing new. In that alternate timeline, the U.S. would not have made a radical move by reversing past policy, and would be merely upping the volume against Israeli settlements. But that's not our timeline.

In our timeline the abstention reversed past U.S. policies on a range of core issue, perhaps nowhere more dramatically than in declaring East Jerusalem occupied Palestinian territory..."