U.S. will vote against U.N. resolution on Israeli taking of Golan Heights

Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Citing an anti-Israel bias, the United States will vote Friday against a U.N. resolution to return the Golan Heights to Syria -- a move U.S. administrations have avoided in the past.

The annual resolution says Israel has illegally "impose[d] its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan." It said "acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible under international law."

Israel has occupied the Golan Heights since the Six-Day War in 1967. The United States has always refrained from voting on the resolution in the past.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the Trump administration will vote against what she called a "useless" resolution.

"The United States will no longer abstain when the United Nations engages in its useless annual vote on the Golan Heights. If this resolution ever made sense, it surely doesn't today," she said Thursday. "The resolution is plainly biased against Israel.

"Further, the atrocities the Syrian regime continues to commit prove its lack of fitness to govern anyone. The destructive influence of the Iranian regime inside Syria presents major threats to international security."

Despite an objection from the United States and Israel, the resolution is expected to pass Friday.

The U.N. General Assembly will consider nine resolutions, all dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The United States is expected to vote no on all of them.

U.N. Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer called the resolutions one-sided.

"Days after the Hamas terrorist group assault Israeli civilians with a barrage of 460 rockets -- while the U.N.'s General Assembly and Human Rights Council stayed silent -- the world body now adds insult to injury by adopting nine lopsided condemnations whose only purpose is to demonize the Jewish state," Neuer said.