1. THE PASSAGE OF UN RESOLUTION 67/19
As most of you will have heard, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly last Thursday afternoon to pass Resolution 67/19, recognizing the Biblical heartland of Judea, Samaria, Gaza and East Jerusalem as a non-member observer Palestinian “state”. 138 nations voted in favor, 41 abstained; only nine nations-Israel, the United States, Canada, the Czech Republic, Panama, and the Pacific Island-states of Palau, Nauru, the Marshall Islands, and Micronesia-cast their votes against the proposition. The next day Israel responded to the vote by granting approval of 3,000 new housing units in east Jerusalem and the West Bank; in particular to begin drawing up plans for settling Jews in the corridor separating Jerusalem from Ma’ale Adummim, a thriving Jewish community a few miles east of the capital about which Israel has long voiced a desire that it eventually become connected to the city. On Sunday the Israeli cabinet on Sunday unanimously passed a resolution rejecting the UN decision, declaring further that it will not serve as a basis for future negotiations. Prime Minister Netanyahu described President Abbas’s speech at the UN as ‘hostile, poisonous’ and filled with “false propaganda”, and on Sunday vowed that “Israel will not allow Judea and Samaria to become a terror base from which rockets will be launched into Israelitowns. There will be no Palestinian State until Israel is recognized as a Jewish State, alongside a resolution to end the conflict.” Later that day P.A. President Abbas delivered a victory speech in Ramallah, in which he said, “We went to New York taking to the world a dream.We have a state now.One day, a young Palestinian will raise the Palestinian flag over Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the state of Palestine.”
