Trump urges veto of UN resolution on halting Israeli settlements

US President-elect Donald Trump has called for veto of a United Nations Security Council resolution that would halt illegal Israeli settlement activities on the occupied Palestinian land.

"The resolution being considered at the United Nations Security Council regarding Israel should be vetoed," the incoming Republican president said in a statement issued early on Thursday.

"As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations between the parties, and not through the imposition of terms by the United Nations," he said.

"This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis," Trump added.

The UN Security Council is scheduled to vote on the resolution, drafted by Egypt, on Thursday.   

Earlier, according to reports, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the US veto the resolution demands that “Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem" because they are a "flagrant violation" of international law.

The resolution calls for “the cessation of all Israeli settlement activities is essential for salvaging the two-state solution," stating that the activities are dangerously imperiling” and threatening the viability of any future Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank.

Over half a million Israelis live in more than 230 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem al-Quds.

All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law. Tel Aviv has defied international calls to stop the settlements expansion in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Recently, the director of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, Yossi Cohen, secretly met with Trump’s transition team, according to reports.

The meeting took place during Cohen’s clandestine visit to the US, where he was accompanied by a delegation of the Tel Aviv regime’s security officials, Israeli media reported Sunday.

Netanyahu reportedly put together the delegation, which was headed by Yaakov Nagel, head of the Israeli National Security Council.

The news of the high-profile meeting surfaced days after Trump nominated David Friedman, a hardline Zionist, as US ambassador to Israel.

The strategic choice would likely pave the way for a controversial decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem al-Quds.

Trump is going to be “even more supportive of Israel’s occupation of Palestine than previous US administrations,” according to Joe Iosbaker, an American anti-war activist and political analyst in Chicago.

“This was already revealed when Trump nominated David Friedman to be ambassador to Israel. Friedman has raised millions to aid the apartheid regime as it builds more illegal Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank,” Iosbaker, a leader of the United National Antiwar Committee, told Press TV on Monday.

“In his first statement accepting the nomination, he reminded the world that Trump has promised to move the US embassy to Jerusalem (al-Quds), which basically recognizes Israel’s claim to the Palestinian city as their capital,” he stated.

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