Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner is apparently already setting U.S. policy on Israel

On Wednesday night, after it became clear that the United States was ready to allow passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Palestinian East Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to Twitter to urge the Obama administration to veto the measure. Soon after, President-elect Donald Trump tweeted an almost verbatim message, "The resolution being considered at the United Nations Security Council regarding Israel should be vetoed," linking to a Facebook post. On Thursday, Egypt, which sponsored the resolution, pulled it for unclear reasons.

A senior Israeli official tells CNN that the Israeli government called Trump to ask him to put pressure on President Obama, after its own efforts failed. A Western official said Israel pressured Egypt to withdraw the resolution as well, and an official in the Trump transition told Reuters that Trump also spoke with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi about the U.N. resolution. Traditionally, presidents-elect don't try to set policy. "It's unprecedented that a president-elect would pronounce on a matter of U.S. policy before he became president," said Arab-Israeli expert Aaron David Miller, "let alone say publicly that the administration should not vote for the resolution."

Trump wasn't certain he should publicly intervene with the tweet and subsequent statement, The Washington Post reports, but he was persuaded by some close advisers:

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

On Twitter, former George W. Bush administration official David Frum tried to put in perspective how unusual this premature policymaking is: "In Dec. 2008, in the midst of worst financial crisis since 1929, Barack Obama meticulously deferred to the one-president-at-a-time rule." You can learn more about the case of the U.N. resolution in the CNN report below. Peter Weber