Israeli settlements - UN vote was a lost opportunity

IT was entirely predictable but nonetheless disheartening that Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned a parade of ambassadors to his apartments on Christmas Day to administer a “personal reprimand”.

Envoys from some of the countries that, last Friday, voted at the UN security council to support a resolution condemning Israeli settlements long regarded as illegal by international

law were singled out for this anti-democratic, we’re-right-and-you’re-wrong hectoring.