Obama has nearly ruled out UN action on Israel, US officials say

US President Barack Obama has decided to abandon any last-ditch effort to push for peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians during his last weeks in the White House, according to a new report.

The outgoing president has ruled out putting pressure on Tel Aviv over the stalled negotiations with the Palestinians, the AP reported Thursday, citing Obama administration officials.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Obama had been considering using the United Nations to pressure Israel for a future peace deal.

"Frustrated by the lack of progress, Obama for more than a year had considered giving a major speech describing his vision for a future peace deal or, in a more aggressive step, supporting a United Nations resolution laying out parameters for such a deal," the report said.

Donald Trump’s unexpected presidential election victory over his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on November 8 was the main reason that prompted Obama to scrap his plans for any action, according to the report.

In anticipation of an easy victory for Clinton, the Obama administration had come up with a list of possible measures to maintain peace through a two-state solution.

Obama has repeatedly opposed the Israeli settlement-building in the occupied Palestinian lands and Clinton was expected to ease that tone.

The outgoing president knew that if he took any actions to limit Israel, it would be nullified by the Trump administration, specially since the Republican Party had won the majority in both chambers of Congress.

Despite this, there was still a chance that Obama would address ongoing conflicts in the Middle East in a limited way, without proposing any peace solutions for the Palestine-Israel issue, the report added.

The last round of the so-called peace talks sponsored by the US stalled in 2014, with Palestinians blaming Israel’s illegal settlement-building in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds, among the territories where they seek an independent state.

Palestinians are seeking to create an independent state on the territories of the West Bank, East al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, with East al-Quds as the capital. They are also demanding that Israel withdraw from the Palestinian lands occupied in a 1967 war. The Tel Aviv regime, however, has refused to return to the 1967 borders and is unwilling to discuss the issue of al-Quds.

In 2012, the United Nations General Assembly voted to upgrade Palestine’s status at the UN from “non-member observer entity” to “non-member observer state” despite strong opposition from the Israeli regime and the US.

In an article published Monday, Former US President Jimmy Carter urged the Obama administration to recognize Palestinian statehood before leaving office January 20.

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