UN Security Council to vote on Israel settlements

The UN Security Council will vote on Thursday on an Egyptian-drafted resolution demanding that Israel immediately halt its settlement activities in the Palestinian territories and east Jerusalem.

A similar resolution was vetoed by the United States in 2011, and it remained uncertain if the measure would be adopted this time, according to AFP news agency.

Egypt circulated the draft late Wednesday and a vote was scheduled for 3pm (9:00pm CET) on Thursday.

Israeli settlements are seen as major stumbling block to peace efforts as they are built on land the Palestinians see as part of their future state.

The United Nations maintains that settlements are illegal and has repeatedly called on Israel to halt them, but UN officials have reported a surge in construction over the past months.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the United States to use its veto to block the measure.

"The US should veto the anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council on Thursday," Netanyahu tweeted.

The US should veto the anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council on Thursday.

— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) December 22, 2016

The draft resolution demands that "Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem."

It states that Israeli settlements are "dangerously imperilling the viability of the two-state solution" that would see an independent state of Palestine co-exist alongside Israel.

The text stresses that halting settlements was "essential for salvaging the two-state solution, and calls for affirmative steps to be taken immediately to reverse the negative trends on the ground."

UN diplomats have for weeks speculated as to whether the administration of US President Barack Obama would decide to refrain from using its veto to block a draft resolution condemning Israel.

Obama's administration has expressed mounting anger over Israeli settlement policy and speculation has grown that he could launch a final initiative before leaving.

The measure calls for "immediate steps" to prevent acts of violence against civilians, but does not specifically single out the Palestinians to stop incitement, as demanded by Israel.

Israel last month revived plans to build 500 new homes for Jewish settlers in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, after Donald Trump won the US presidential election.

Under Netanyahu's government, settlement construction has surged with some 15,000 settlers moving into the West Bank over the past year alone.

Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon described the proposed measure as the "peak of hypocrisy" arguing that it will "only reward the Palestinian policy of incitement and terror."

"In a few hours we will receive the answer from our American friends," he said on Israeli Army Radio. "I hope very much it will be the same one we received in 2011 when the version was very similar to the one proposed now and the US ambassador to the UN at the time, Susan Rice, vetoed it."

"We expect our greatest ally not to allow this one-sided and anti-Israel resolution to be adopted by the council," Danon later added, in a statement.

The United States has said that continued Israeli settlement building lacks legitimacy, but has stopped short of adopting the position of many countries that it is illegal under international law. Some 570,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in a 1967 war.

The US joined the European Union, the United Nations and Russia in calling for a halt to Jewish settlements in a report released in October by the so-called diplomatic Quartet on the Middle East.

The report was to serve as the basis for reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process which has been comatose since a US initiative collapsed in April 2014.

A resolution needs nine votes in favour and no vetoes by the United States, France, Russia, Britain or China to be adopted.