The United States on Monday signed on to a UN Security Council statement expressing “dismay” over Jewish settlements being built in Yehuda and the Shomron.

“The Security Council reiterates that continuing Israeli settlement activities are dangerously imperiling the viability of a two-state solution,” the statement, which was backed by all 15 Security Council members, reads.

The statement is non-binding and thus doesn’t carry the weight of a resolution proposed last week which would have demanded that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory.” That resolution has been shelved after an agreement was reached with the Biden administration.

In explaining the Biden administration’s support for the statement, UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield equivocated Jews building homes in Yehuda and Shomron to terrorist attacks that have killed Israeli civilians.

“Colleagues, we are deeply troubled by the spiraling violence across Israel, the West Bank, and Jerusalem. We strongly condemn the recent terrorist attacks in Israel, including the horrific attack outside of a synagogue in East Jerusalem on January 27 and the attack on civilians, including children, at a bus stop in Jerusalem on February 10,” Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield said in an address.

“The deliberate targeting of innocent civilians is unconscionable. And the United States supports Israel’s right to self-defense,” she said. “Terrorist attacks on religious sites, attacks by settlers, attacks on security services, rockets launched against civilian areas, and other forms of violence create a cycle of increasingly dangerous escalations. This concern is raised by the upcoming period of religious holidays in Jerusalem.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)