BICOM

(Photo: UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson speaking at a Chatham House event, 12 December 2016. Flickr.)

The UK Foreign Secretary told MPs yesterday that the UK did help draft the controversial UN Security Council resolution last month, but did so because it contained new language on terrorism.

Boris Johnson told the House of Commons that “the UK was closely involved in the drafting” of Resolution 2334, which was adopted after the US abstained, rather than choosing to apply its traditional veto to Security Council resolutions considered hostile towards Israel.

The text expressed “grave concern that continuing Israeli settlement activities are dangerously imperilling the viability of the two-state solution based on the 1967 lines,” and called upon all states, “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967”.

However, Johnson said that “we only supported it because it contained new language pointing out the infamy of terrorism that Israeli suffers every day”.

The resolution condemned “all acts of violence against civilians,” but Israeli leaders believe this language did not adequately address the most recent wave of Palestinian violence and incitement, which has killed at least 46 people since October 2015.

Johnson also used the opportunity to defend US Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech several days after the resolution, which was highly critical of Israel’s government and its policies.

Johnson said: “Kerry was completely right to draw attention to the illegal settlements and he was completely right to draw attention to the substance of Resolution 2334.”

Two weeks ago, UK Prime Minister Theresa May took the unusual step of criticising Kerry’s speech.

She said: “We do not believe that the way to negotiate peace is by focusing on only one issue, in this cases the construction of settlements.”

Johnson was also asked in the House of Commons yesterday by Conservative MPs including Hugo Swire, why Israel’s Ambassador to London, Mark Regev, had not been disciplined after an embassy employee was caught on camera discussing “taking down” MPs considered critical of Israel. Johnson said that following Regev’s “full apology…he matter can be considered closed”.