Israel Requests, Bush Responds: The US Abstention on the UN Cease-Fire Resolution

Enduring America, 10 January: It’s a final legacy for President Bush, refusing to back a cease-fire and effectively green-lighting Israel to carry on with the killing (of both Hamas fighters and civilians) in Gaza. But that leaves a further mystery: who really made the decision to pull away from the resolution?

Answer: it was Bush, even though he had no knowledge of the resolution's language. It was Bush, overruling (and humiliating his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice) carrying out the wishes of the Israeli Government.



In an extraordinarily frank summary on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert set out the process:

[Bush] was taken off the podium [at an event in Philadelphia] and brought to a side room. I spoke with him; I told him: You can't vote for this proposal.

He said: Listen, I don't know, I didn't see, don't know what it says.

I told him: I know, and you can't vote for it!

He then instructed the secretary of state, and she did not vote for it.

Olmert added, "[Rice] was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour."

Juan Cole has a lengthy, provocative analysis of the episode and its significance for US foreign policy.

Comments

[Dave]

It's a BAD resolution. I just decided to look at it now, and I have to say that Rice should be ashamed of herself.

Hamas’s provocation for the Israeli military action is not even mentioned in that resolution. There is not a word stating that the rocket attacks on the Israeli civilian population must stop completely as a condition for such withdrawal of Israeli forces. The resolution doesn't place any degree of blame on Hamas at all! Opening the crossings? Well, what about destroying the tunnels? Not a single word on that.

Hamas is not even mentioned -- NOT ONCE! Take a look and see for yourselves.

http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/d744b47860e5c97e85256c40005d01d6/96514396e8389a2c852575390051d574!OpenDocument

[Ian]

Provocative perhaps. One might be tempted to say that JC's comments are conspiratorial:

- "Why in the world would Bush over-rule the US Secretary of State, for the sake of Olmert, in the midst of delicate negotiations with European and Arab allies?"

- 3. Olmert has something over Bush. I remember that Bush had taken on Sharon in September of 2001, calling for a Palestinian state and ordering Sharon to stop colonizing the West Bank. Sharon was so furious that he compared Israel's situation to that of Czechoslovakia in 1938, when the rest of Europe let Hitler grab part of it. But by spring of 2002 Bush was bending over backward to please the Likud. What changed? Something did. There is a mystery to be explained here. I only point out that along with the previous two explanations, this one would make sense of otherwise baffling behavior on Bush's part."