UN setback reflects 'failure' of peace process: Hamas

Palestinian group Hamas has described the UN rejection of a resolution setting a deadline for ending the decades-long Israeli occupation as a “failure” of peaceful settlement.

In a Wednesday statement, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to stop “manipulating” Palestinian rights and national aspirations.

The UN Security Council on Tuesday rejected a draft resolution calling for an end to the decades-long Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories within three years.

The motion, which was submitted on Monday by Jordan after being agreed upon by Arab states, failed to obtain the minimum nine votes from the 15-member council.

The U.S. and Australia both voted against the proposal.

The United Kingdom, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Korea and Lithuania abstained from voting, while Jordan, France, Russia, China, Argentina, Chad, Chile and Luxembourg voted in favour.

The resolution sets the end of 2017 as the deadline for Israel to fully withdraw from the occupied territories and to declare East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders.

Abbas had earlier threatened to sever “all forms of coordination” with Israel and join the International Criminal Court if the UN Security Council failed to adopt the resolution.

Direct, U.S.-brokered Palestinian-Israeli talks came to a halt in April when Israel refused to release a group of Palestinian prisoners despite earlier pledges to do so.

The roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict date to 1917, when the British government, in the now-famous “Balfour Declaration,” called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the holy city in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Jewish state – a move never recognized by the international community.

Palestinians want a state of their own in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem, currently occupied by Israel, as its capital.