Israel’s prime minister has summoned the US ambassador amid a growing row after the US eased the passage of a resolution against Israel at the UN.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who is also foreign minister, took the unusual step of calling Dan Shapiro to his office, reports the BBC.

It comes after Israel summoned ambassadors from countries which voted for Friday’s resolution.

The reprimands came after Israel vowed to take retaliatory steps for what it called a “shameful” act by the UN.

The measure, which harshly criticised Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, passed when the US abstained instead of using its veto.

Israel has accused the US, its closest ally but a frequent critic of settlements, of engineering the vote - a charge Washington has denied.

“From the information that we have, we have no doubt that the Obama administration initiated it, stood behind it, co-ordinated on the wording and demanded that it be passed,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

“Friends don’t take friends to the Security Council,” he said.

The resolution - the first since 1979 to condemn Israel over its settlement policy - said the settlements had “no legal validity” and constituted “a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution”.

Netanyahu and President Obama have had a difficult relationship during Obama’s two terms and Israel had feared that Washington would take such a measure in the final weeks of Obama’s presidency.

President-elect Donald Trump tweeted that the vote was a “big loss” for Israel which “will make it much harder to negotiate peace”, vowing “we will get it done anyway”.

Trump, whose intervention last Friday helped get a similar draft resolution withdrawn, promised that “things will be different” at the UN after he takes office on 20 January.

BDST: 1251 HRS, DEC 26, 2016
SR