According to Haaretz, The British secretly worked the Palestinian Authority, urging New Zealand to move ahead with the resolution.
On Friday, just before the UN Security Council voted on Resolution 2334, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanayhu spoke to New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully.
New Zealand, together with Senegal, Malaysia, and Venezuela, was leading the move to resubmit the resolution, even though Egypt, who had submitted the resolution, had already backed out.
A few hours earlier, a senior official in the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem called New Zealand’s ambassador to Israel, Jonathan Curr, and warned that if New Zealand’s move came to a vote, Israel might close its embassy in Wellington in protest.
Netanyahu’s phone call to McCully was almost his last attempt to prevent the vote, or at least to postpone it and buy a little time. Western diplomats say the conversation was harsh and very tense and Netanyahu let loose with sharp threats, perhaps unprecedented in relations between Israel and another Western country.
"This is a scandalous decision. I’m asking that you not support it and not promote it," Netanyahu told McCully, according to the Western diplomats, who asked to remain unnamed due to the sensitivity of the matter.
"If you continue to promote this resolution from our point of view it will be a declaration of war. It will rupture the relations and there will be consequences. We’ll recall our ambassador to Jerusalem." READ MORE
