United Nations member flags outside headquarters in Manhattan. Photo: Wikimedia commons.

The UN Security Council’s recent vote on Israel was not about “settlements.” It was a ruse to steal parts of Israel by calling these areas “illegally occupied Palestinian territory.”

Obama latched on to the idea, and helped lobby other countries to support the Resolution. Not too many people noticed John Kerry’s November New Zealand visit. Despite Kerry’s claim that the visit was about the Syrian conflict, I believe the true purpose was to discuss the impending Security Council meeting (New Zealand has a seat in the Security Council).

Egypt withdrew its sponsorship of the anti-Israel resolution due to Donald Trump. But it could have taken a quick phone call by Obama (or Biden) to get New Zealand to step in and join Malaysia, Senegal and Venezuela as co-sponsors of the treacherous act.

Beyond the settlement issue, the wording of the Resolution wrongly claimed that “settlement in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including east Jerusalem has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.”

UN Resolution 242, passed in 1967, called on Israel’s armed forces to withdraw from territory. It didn’t demand that Israel withdraw from all the territory, as Resolution 2334 does.

Resolution 242 acknowledged Israel’s right to protect itself and live in peace within secure and recognized borders. The newly adopted UNSC 2334 has the chutzpah to rename all of these areas as “occupied Palestinian territory.”

The Security Council has tried to convert a false definition into international law.

The Resolution ignored ongoing Palestinian terrorism and their failure to achieve any of the perquisites for a state — and it ignored the right of every country in the area to live in peace, particularly Israel, as demanded in UNSC Resolution 242.

Although the new Resolution is packed with demands for Israel, it makes no similar demands of the Palestinian Authority or of Hamas. In fact, Hamas is not mentioned at all– as if it doesn’t even exist.

The UNSC Resolution blankets Israel as the sole perpetrator of international lawlessness. It fails to recognize any Palestinian wrongdoing.

Both sides of the Palestinian political divide want to eradicate the Jewish state. The PLO and Hamas charters both call for the eventual destruction of Israel — and the murder of its Jews. This was not addressed by the UNSC.

The Oslo Accords divided Judea and Samaria into three zones. Area A was put under the civil and security administration of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Area B was given to the PA for their civil rule with security elements to be jointly shared by Israel and the PA.  And Area C was put under exclusive Israel civil and security control.

There are almost 600,000 Jews and less than 100,000 Arabs residing in Area C. The Palestinian Authority — with the assistance of EU countries — is illegally  transferring Bedouin Arabs into Area C. This is in direct violation of the Oslo Accords, which the UN has flagrantly disregarded.

Under the Oslo Accords, the status of Area C was supposed to be directly negotiated by Israel and the Palestinians. Instead, Area C has now been given the status of “illegally occupied Palestinian territory” by the United Nations. But this is simply not what was supposed to happen. The Oslo Accords never demand that Israel withdraw from this territory.

The most abhorrent aspect of the UNSC resolution is the fact that it tries to give control of all Jewish holy sites in the “occupied” areas to the Palestinians.

When the Security Council calls the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem — with its synagogues, yeshivot, Jewish population and businesses, the Jewish Temple Mount and the Western Wall, the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, the Hadassah Hospital and other profoundly Jewish Israeli institutions — “Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem,” this is a surrender that no Israeli government or any caring Jew is prepared to accept.

The fact that the United States, New Zealand, the UK and France lent their hand to this infamous act is appalling.

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies and the author of the upcoming and timely book ‘1917. From Palestine to the Land of Israel.’