This article by Anne Bayefsky originally appeared on Washington Examiner.
It is time to talk about the post-election surprise: a bitter President Barack Obama stabs Israel in the back on his way out the door. There is a very real danger the president will dramatically change long-standing, bipartisan foreign policy by refusing to exercise the United States’ veto power at the United Nations Security Council on a devastating anti-Israel resolution.
For eight long years, Obama has used the U.N. as his personal playground, the place for doing an end run around Congress and the American electorate.
The Iran deal brought this deeply anti-democratic strategy to a new low. A treaty was dressed-up as an executive handshake and the president dashed first to the Security Council in order to blackmail Congress with newly-minted international legal obligations.
Before the Iran deal, the world’s leading state sponsor of terror – Clearly intent on acquiring nuclear weapons – was on the defensive, disgraced and significantly isolated. The president used the U.N. to reverse all that.
On Oct. 28, President Obama entered the U.S. in an election for a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council and won a three-year term starting in January 2017 just as he leaves office. President George W. Bush refused to join, bankroll or lend credence to this disreputable U.N. body, and President-elect Donald Trump should immediately resign from the seat once he takes office.
Now Obama is contemplating one last push to use the U.N. to stymie the will of the people. It is imperative this move be understood for exactly what it is: A direct attempt to live beyond the grave, to hamstring the President-elect, and undermine the well-being of the Jewish state.
By now, the fabrication that Obama was ever seriously interested in the welfare of Israel has been thoroughly discredited. Choosing Iran over Israel, siding with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, forcing an Israeli apology to Turkey’s Islamic dictator, repeatedly ridiculing Israel’s prime minister – The list goes on and on.
Comprehending the danger of a new Security Council resolution means fully appreciating that Obama doing lasting damage to Israel on his way out of office is in-character. It is not an unplanned temper tantrum.
No one knows for sure what the parameters of the Obama’s U.N. initiative might be. But best guesses consist of extrapolating from the very harsh criticism he and his surrogates have heaped on Israelis living in Palestinian-claimed territory – known to critics as “settlements.”
The story goes that Israelis tilling land where governance may one day change hands are the biggest obstacle to peace, on the grounds that Palestinians demand a Jew-free state.
In other words, Palestine is to be an apartheid state in the name of the protection of human rights. This is the “logic” of not exercising an American veto over a legally-binding Security Council resolution that would condemn settlements as “illegal.”
The ramifications of such a resolution would be profound. First, it would legitimize BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign of those who seek to delegitimize and destroy a Jewish state.
BDS is an effort to do, through foreign and economic policy, what Israel’s enemies have been unable to do on the battlefield. If settlements are illegal with the blessing of the U.S. then BDS is just the valid execution phase.
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This is not just theory. In March 2016, the Human Rights Council decided “to produce a database of all business enterprises involved” “directly or indirectly” with settlements, from banking and financial operations to security services. The list will be made public in March 2017 and a Security Council resolution on settlements risks opening the floodgates for economic blackmail and rampant lawfare.
Second, such a Security Council resolution could fast-track the prosecution of Israelis before the International Criminal Court. The ICC is now under tremendous pressure from African states to let up on African criminals.
Since Islamic states sullied the ICC statute by inserting settlements into the definition of war crimes, declaring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a criminal would check a lot of boxes. It would be much harder to dispute if the U.S. agreed to a resolution declaring settlements to be a criminal activity.
Third, there is no chance of reversal. The Chinese and Russian veto power would guarantee that, once adopted, the resolution could not be rescinded.
Obama might be dreaming up other scenarios with Palestinian and U.N. cohorts. Possibilities include supporting a French idea to gang up on Israel at an international conference or imposing artificial deadlines on peace talks that would wind-up with full U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state with or without Arab recognition of a Jewish state and an end to hostilities.
All such scenarios break with decades of U.S. policy. Negotiations between the parties, not U.N.-fiat, is the only way to bring about peaceful coexistence. Direct negotiations mean legitimizing one’s counterpart, which is why Palestinians alone routinely shun them. If Obama suddenly backs a U.N. diktat, he will deal a grave blow to the prospect of negotiations and peace.
Failing to veto a Security Council resolution on Israel would deliberately destroy the freedom of President-elect Trump to chart his own course. Obama has ruled by decree for far too long. This time he must be stopped.
