Egypt withdrew on Friday a draft resolution submitted to the UN Security Council against the Israeli settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories while each of Senegal Venezuela Malaysia and New Zealand adopted it and asked for a vote later in the evening.
According to al-Jazeera’s correspondent in New York Raed Faqih Egypt withdrew its draft resolution against the Israeli settlements from deliberation permanently. Diplomatic sources said that this move came to halt any attempt to re-propose the resolution by other countries.
In the meantime the Palestinian envoy to the United Nations Riyad Mansour emphasized that the vote will be re-launched later Friday. Diplomates said that the delegates of Senegal New Zealand Venezuela and Malaysia decided to invite the Security Council to vote tonight.
Earlier al-Jazeera’s correspondent quoting a news source from the Security Council said that the delegates of the four countries gave Cairo a deadline which was yesterday midnight to take a decision regarding re-proposing the resolution. The deadline expired with no response from Egypt so the four delegates held a meeting with their Palestinian counterpart Friday evening to assess the situation.
Diplomats said that Angola and Uruguay are considering joining the four countries.
Since Egypt withdrew the resolution permanently the countries willing to re-propose it must repeat all the usual technical procedures required to draft it and then propose it for deliberation and vote.
The Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and US president-elect Donald Trump agreed on allowing the new US administration to “deal with all dimensions of the Palestinian issue in an integrated manner to achieve a final and comprehensive settlement” according to the Egyptian president’s office.
Jerusalem Post the Israeli English-language newspaper quoting a western diplomatic source said that the Egyptian president was subjected to pressures from Tel Aviv and ordered to withdraw the draft resolution despite the fact that Egypt was the first to prepare the draft and put it for vote.
Egypt asked on Thursday to postpone the vote until further notice citing the need to make more consultations with other partners.
The UN Security Council was supposed to hold on Thursday a vote on a draft resolution demanding a halt to the Israeli settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories including East Jerusalem.
The resolution needs 9 votes in favor to pass in case none of the five permanent members (the United States Britain Russia France and China) vetoes.
The draft resolution states that the Israeli settlements are illegal and considered a blatant violation according to the international law and demands Israel to stop settlement activities to save “the two-state solution”.
