December 30, 2016

The International Rabbinic Fellowship expresses its disappointment in the decision of the Obama administration to abstain, rather than veto, the recent UN Security Council resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

We concur with leading Democratic officials including incoming Senate Minority leader, Sen. Charles Schumer, and former envoy to the Middle East for the Obama administration, Sen. George Mitchell, who criticized the move as harming rather than helping the cause of peace. 

We appreciate the complexities of and responsibilities that all sides have in the breakdown that has led to the impasse in the peace process. We also appreciate that Israel's settlement policy is fair game for critique and is deeply controversial. However, the excessive emphasis on Israel's settlement policy manifested in both the UN resolution and Secretary of State John Kerry's subsequent policy speech as the central issue strikes us as off the mark and counterproductive.