Microphone diplomacy at the Security Council

The United States has often stood alone in the UN Security Council when it comes to Israel-Palestine. In most cases, that isolation results in an American veto of draft resolutions supported by other Council members. In the past decade, the United States has vetoed almost a dozen resolutions it deemed too critical of Israel. Today ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

The United States has often stood alone in the UN Security Council when it comes to Israel-Palestine. In most cases, that isolation results in an American veto of draft resolutions supported by other Council members. In the past decade, the United States has vetoed almost a dozen resolutions it deemed too critical of Israel.

The United States has often stood alone in the UN Security Council when it comes to Israel-Palestine. In most cases, that isolation results in an American veto of draft resolutions supported by other Council members. In the past decade, the United States has vetoed almost a dozen resolutions it deemed too critical of Israel.

Today in New York, the other fourteen members of the Security Council used an imaginative tactic to signal Council displeasure with Israel (over its settlement expansion) while avoiding a formal veto. Voice of America‘s Margaret Besheer reports:

Normally the Security Council carries on its work around the horseshoe-shaped table inside its chamber. But on Wednesday, 14 council members took to the microphone outside the chamber to express their condemnation of Israel’s latest settlement expansion announcement. 

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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