by WorldTribune Staff, November 13, 2016
Palestinians will “make life miserable” for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump if he moves the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the Palestinian Authority’s ambassador to the UN warned.
“If people attack us by moving the embassy to Jerusalem, which is a violation of Security Council resolutions, it is a violation of resolution 181 of the UN general assembly that was drafted by the U.S. … it means they are showing belligerency towards us … If they do that nobody should blame us for unleashing all of the weapons that we have in the UN to defend ourselves and we have a lot of weapons in the UN,” Riyad Mansour said on Nov. 11, according to Haaretz.
Mansour said that the Palestinian Authority response to a move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem could not be a Security Council resolution because the United States would veto it.
“Maybe I can’t have resolutions in the Security Council but I can make their lives miserable every day with precipitating a veto on my admission as a member state. Italy in 1949 received 3 consecutive vetoes on its admission to the UN from the Soviet Union. These are the kind of things that I can do,” he threatened.
“It is illegal to defy Security Council resolutions that the U.S. is party to. The unilateral action by Israel annexing East Jerusalem is illegal and it is null and void. If the U.S. administration wants to defy international law they are doing something illegal. I hope they will do nothing,” said Mansour.
“Many candidates gave the same election promise but didn’t implement it because what you do when you are campaigning is one thing but when you have to deal with the legal thing it is something else,” he added.
Trump said during his campaign that, while he would be happy to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, “in order for an agreement to happen, the Palestinians need to show interest. It’s a little difficult to reach an agreement when the other side doesn’t really want to talk to you.”
Trump told The Wall Street Journal on Nov. 12 that he would do his best to bring an end to “the war that never ends.”
“That’s the ultimate deal,” Trump said. “As a deal maker, I’d like to do…the deal that can’t be made. And do it for humanity’s sake.”
The president-elect also said that he would not force an agreement on Israel and told President Barack Obama not to use the lame-duck period to act with regard to Israel in ways with which he, Trump, does not agree.