Israel Matzav

Obama abandons the Negroponte doctrine

Sorry for the down time - this evening has been crazy.

In the 'bad old days' of George W. Bush, US veto policy at the United Nations was dictated by something called the Negroponte doctrine, which was named after then-US ambassador to the United Nations John Negroponte. The Negroponte Doctrine, which was explicitly posted on the website of the U.S. mission to the United Nations in 2003, says

We will not support any resolution that dodges the explicit threat to Middle East peace posed by Hamas and other such terrorist groups....Any Security Council resolution...must contain...an explicit condemnation of Hamas [and other] organizations responsible for acts of terrorism; and...call for dismantling the infrastructure, which supports these terror operations.

But if the Obama administration's handling of the Mavi Marmara issue at the United Nations is any indication, the Negroponte doctrine may have gone the way of balanced budgets.

But that is not what happened. Negotiations produced a Presidential Statement weaker than the one demanded by Turkey but still very unfriendly to Israel. The statement condemned only "those acts" that resulted in deaths and did not cite Israel by name -- an elision for which the administration deserves credit. But it contained none of the elements that Obama had said were indispensable and should be sine qua non for the U.S. to agree to a Security Council statement. It made no reference to the threat that gave rise to the blockade; no mention of Hamas or its commitment to destroy a member-state of the United Nations; no acknowledgement that Israel's purpose is to prevent smuggling of arms; no affirmation of Israel's right of self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter; not a syllable about terrorism; and overall, not one word that could be said to reflect the Israeli point of view.

Then there was this sentence: "The Security Council takes note of the statement of the U.N. Secretary-General on the need to have a full investigation into the matter ...conforming to international standards." This was taken to mean an investigation conducted by an international commission appointed by the secretary-general. This just months after the Goldstone Report, a UN report on the situation in Gaza about which the Obama administration declared it had "serious concerns" because of the report's "unbalanced focus on Israel" and its "moral equivalence between Israel...and the terrorist group Hamas."

American diplomats did prevent the Council Statement from authorizing such a UN investigation outright. The U.S. said that Israel, a country with a fiercely independent judiciary and strong democratic institutions, should be allowed to conduct its own investigation with the participation of international observers.

The result of Obama's reluctance to state unequivocally that he is opposed to a UN investigation was summarized by a Politico headline: "Secretary-General Gaza investigation gathers steam, as U.S. stays neutral." As former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said in response, "President Obama has not moved decisively to quash the idea, and his inaction is understood in U.N. circles as implicitly consenting to Mr. Ban's illegitimate initiative."

Is this a sign for the future? Read the whole thing. It's very disturbing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:55 PM