Greenblatt hits back at Germany: UN resolutions are not way to make peace
Greenblatt appeared in July before the UN’s Security Council and, at the time, criticized the institution’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks until now.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFUS special envoy Jason Greenblatt at the UNSC Arria-formula meeting in New York(photo credit: SCREEN CAPTURE/UN WEB TV)
After coming under fire from Germany last month, the White House’s Mideast envoy Jason Greenblatt shot back on Thursday, blasting the UN while claiming that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not be solved through “these ambiguously-worded, highly controversial resolutions [which] serves as a cloak to avoid substantive debate about the realities on the ground and the complexity of the conflict.”Greenblatt appeared in July before the UN’s Security Council and, at the time, criticized the institution’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks until now, taking aim, he said, at “the constant drumbeat of tired rhetoric that is designed to prevent progress and bypass direct negotiations. It is time to retire that rhetoric.”After his talk, Greenblatt faced fierce criticism from German’s Ambassador to the UN Christoph Heusgen who said, at the time, that “it is the U.S. that has left the international consensus.”“For us, international law is not an a la carte menu,” Heusgen said, adding that Germany does not “believe in the force of the strongest.”On Thursday, Greenblatt published an oped in the German newspaper Die Welt in which he took a diplomatic tone, but came out strongly against Heugsen.“With respect, Ambassador, neither does the United States,” Greenblatt wrote. “In our intervention, we clearly stated that a solution cannot be forced upon the parties, and the only way ahead is direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Our point was that collectively, UN Security Council resolutions passed with the intent of providing a framework for resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have failed to create progress.”Greenblatt wrote that there is no disagreement between the US and Germany about the utility of Security Council resolutions that are clear and effective. “However, in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he wrote, “competing interpretations of these resolutions have sparked more disagreement than consensus. Further, insisting on the United Nations as the reference point for resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while failing to acknowledge the deep, pervasive, anti-Israel bias in the UN system is, speaking frankly, disingenuous.”
