- U.S. House of Representatives
The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly agreed to condemn a U.N. Security Council anti-settlements resolution and the Obama administration for allowing it through. The resolution, which passed Thursday evening by a vote of 342-80, said the Security Council vote last month “undermined the long-standing position of the United States to oppose and veto United Nations Security Council resolutions that seek to impose solutions to final status issues.”
The Obama administration abstained, refraining from exercising its veto and allowing the Security Council resolution to pass 14-0. U.S. officials said then that they could not endorse the resolution because of the inherent anti-Israel bias of the United Nations, but did not want to veto it because they agreed with its premise that Israeli settlement construction was illegal and an obstruction to advancing peace. Reps. Ed Royce, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., the committee’s senior Democrat, sponsored the measure.