Netanyahu thanks US House for vote to slam anti-Israel UN resolution

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed his gratitude to US legislators after the House of Representatives voted in condemnation of a recent UN Security Council resolution demanding a halt to the Tel Aviv regime’s settlement expansion policy.

Netanyahu, in a video statement published on Friday, described the anti-Israel resolution, which was adopted on December 23, 2016, as outrageous and one-sided, stating that House members “voted to either repeal the resolution at the UN or change it - and that's exactly what we intend to do.”

On Thursday, the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan measure criticizing Security Council Resolution 2334.

The motion, which passed 342 to 80 on Thursday, described last month’s resolution as “an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace.”

It noted that the decision by the administration of outgoing US President Barack Obama to abstain, and not veto, the resolution “undermined” Washington’s decades-long policy of shielding Israel at the UN.

The congressional measure stated that the US “should oppose and veto future United Nations Security Council resolutions that seek to impose solutions to final status issues, or are one-sided and anti-Israel.”

The Security Council Resolution 2334 demands Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem” al-Quds.

It also states that the building of settlements by Israel has “no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.”

Israeli officials claim they have “iron-clad information,” which reveals the Obama administration drafted the document to end unlawful settlements on Palestinian land.

Israel cuts UN funding

Meanwhile, Israel's mission to the UN said on Friday the regime would cut $6 million in this year’s funding to "anti-Israel" UN bodies in retaliation for the resolution.

"It is unreasonable for Israel to fund bodies that operate against us at the UN," Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon said in a statement, vowing to take further retaliatory measures after US President-elect Donald Trump takes office later this month.

About 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds.

The continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine has created a major obstacle to the efforts to establish peace in the Middle East.

The Palestinian Authority wants the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinians state, with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital.

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