Recently the US ambassador to the United Nations told UN council members that the US veto “should not be misunderstood to mean we support settlement activity.” .
The perennial UN joke. ‘Why does the US have a veto? ‘
To stop anyone stopping Israel from taking over all of Palestine, their only objective.
All fourteen other Security Council members voted in favour of the resolution.
British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, speaking on behalf of his country, France and Germany, condemned Israeli settlements in the West Bank. “They are illegal under international law,” he said.
He added that the European Union’s three biggest nations hope that an independent state of Palestine will join the United Nations as a new member state by September 2011.
The Obama administration’s veto has angered Arab countries and Palestinian supporters around the world. An abstention would have angered the Israelis, the only US ally in the region, as well as Democratic and Republican supporters paid off by Israel in the American Congress per courtesy of AIPAC, Graft Incorporated.

“They manage the holocaust denial movements, a full time industry the same way they dominate the 9/11 Truth movements and then there's the Tea Party, the Zionist Koch brothers private political party, all “field based warfare” tactics, controlling the information age “battlefield” . This is how Israel plays both sides against the middle”, so says Veterans Today in the US.

Mr. Abbas, has always tried to be the Palestinian front man against the so-called “honest brokers”,consisting of Mubarak, criminal dictator and torturer for the US, Clinton, devoid of one ounce of credibility on any subject. Honest brokers is pure farce. But it is in such an environment that the naive Abbas went head to head with the evil Netanyahu, going through the motions, yet again, as before and before that and before that.
So four around the table but three just there for show. That’s the way it has always been.
That is a stacked deck and has been since day one. A charade.

Roll on September, 2011. The decent world is tired of Israel

Ah the Super Propagandist, the Gobbles of Israeli Propaganda Dept,where Israel is concerned black is while the sun rises in the West and sinks in the East,bugger off Singer your just another paid propaganda merchant,with the same BS over and over again.
Your going to lose in the long run and you know it

Well, John Ryan and others who would like to see Israel "lose", you would seem to believe in your own 2 state solution - Muslim Jordan, founded on more than half of British-mandated palestine, and a Muslim merged Israel-Palestine. Because if Muslim palestinians gain political control of the country currently called Israel (which would happen under the farcical right-of-return, or after a successful war) you can hold your beath until the murdering of the Jewish population begins. And once enough Jews have been murdered or fled, a Muslim-majority Israel will dissolve itself into Muslim majority Palestine. And so many Jews will be murdered, and the Jews as a people will not have a nation. Are you happy to take responsibiltiy for that?
By the way, did you know, the Jews created their community in a process with much more integrity than Muhammad created Islam? The Jews are the indigenous people of the area.

Whilst I do not support Israeli settlement on the West Bank, this is legal under international law.

Until the Palestinians decide to create a state, the West Bank is not sovereign territory. Occupation refers to foreign control of sovereign territory of another state, such as the Nazi occupation of Europe.

Before the Islamic period Jews lived on the West Bank ( Judea and Samaria). The UN Mandate for Palestine, provided the establishment of a Jewish state, also encouraging settlement by Jews on the land including Judea and Samaria.

Jordan's rule 1948-1967, contrary to the above Mandate, prohibited Jews living in this area. However ... no country recognised Jordan's rule of the West Bank as sovereign, ... other than Britian and Pakistan.

Under international law, neither Jordan, Egypt nor the Palestinians have ever held sovereign authority in any part of Palestine.

Professor Eugene Rostow, formerly Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, the Johnson’ Administration, stated “The Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the local population to live there.”
(American Journal of International Law, 1990, vol.84: p.72)

Israel's control of territory on the West Bank is the consequence of needing to defend itself. The UN Security Resolution 242 endorsed Israel's need to claim an area for defensible borders.

Since Oslo, Israel transferred virtlual civilian authority to the PA, retaining only that necessary to ensure security of its citizens.

Prominent Jurists, like Stephen Schwebel, formerly President of the International Court of Justice, stated that a country acting in self-defence may seize and occupy territory when necessary to protect itself. That a state may require, as a condition for its withdrawl, security measures designed to ensure its citizens are not menaced again from that territory.
(American Journal of International Law, April 1970: pp.345-346)

Professor Rostow: Resolution 242 gives Israel legal right to be in the West Bank. The resolution “allows Israel to administer the territories” it won in 1967 “until a just and lasting peace in the Middle East “is achieved.
(New Republic, October 21,1991: p.14)

cont ...

The extent to which Israel is forced to maintain a military presence in the territory is determined by the beligerence of the Palestinians. For peace in the region, the Palestinians have to recognise the State of Israel, extend a sincere hand of peace, and form a sovereign state. Why has this been so hard for them ... and so self-defeating?

Nonie Darwish, stated on Al-Arabiya TV on March 23,1997: “We should begin to view the Palestinian Arab cause in a different manner. For 58 yeas we have been fighting Israel... Enough, we must resolve this problem, because it hinders the progess of the Arab peoples ... we must be just and grant them security. There are five million of them, and we are 1.2 [billion] Muslims. What are we afraid of - five million Jews? We must welcome them so they can live in our midst ... we must stop the terrorism in Israel, and we must not encourage Hamas to say it wants to annihilate Israel."

Rashid Khalidi, director of the Middle East Institute: “It is time that Palestinian leaders looked at their own weaknesses instead of blaming everything on Zionism, imperialism, and other outside forces.”

Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza: “... officials with the mind-set of a banana republic are causing tremendous damage to the Palestinian cause.”

Those claiming to be pro-Palestinian, are less pro-Palestinian, than seeking their own agenda.

# Danielle

Thank you for your clear exposition of international law as it applies to the West Bank - with which I heartily concur.

I would just add the following comments:

The rights of Jews to live in the West Bank and to reconstitute the Jewish National Home there were legally recognized and sanctioned by the Mandate for Palestine and such rights have been preserved by article 80 of the United Nations Charter to this very day.

Attempts to deny the Jews have any such legal claims are therefore unsustainable and need to be rejected whenever, wherever and by whomsoever they are made.

Claims that only Arabs can live there and that the West Bank must be totally cleansed of Jews are racist and reek of apartheid.

One can certainly question and criticize the political wisdom of exercising such vested Jewish rights but not the existence of the rights themselves.