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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Monday, January 12, 2009

Haaretz columnist: UN Gaza truce resolution was serious diplomatic malfunction

At the last minute, at 3:30 A.M., Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also intervened with a desperate phone call to President George W. Bush, requesting that the United States veto the resolution. Bush refused, simply instructing Rice to abstain from the vote.

One doesn't need to know all the details to realize that a late-night phone call between national leaders is the result of a major malfunction in the diplomatic handling of state matters, which reveals a problem in the relationship between Israel and the United States.
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posted by mikevotes at 7:58 AM

3 Comments:

  • This just seems.... odd, somehow. Is there a back story to this that I'm missing? Why the break down before this thing went to a vote? Was Bush trying to take Olmert down a couple of pegs, or was he just afraid of his legacy if he were to vote against the resolution?

    Strange.

    By Blogger -epm, at 9:19 AM  

  • I found the abstention strange. It was almost like Bush passing the ball back to Olmert.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:28 AM  

  • I read somewhere else, too unsourced to put on the front page that Cheney was leading one crew who wanted a veto, while Condi Rice was leading another faction who wanted to vote yes.

    So, the abstention was sort of towards Rice, down the middle.

    (And the thing I found really interesting was the 3AM call as the Israelis heard (from Cheney's folks?) that the US wasn't going to veto..)

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 10:43 AM  

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