JERUSALEM
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Wednesday that the Palestinian failure to pass a statehood resolution at the United Nations should teach them a lesson.
"The failure of the Palestinian resolution must teach the Palestinians that provocation and attempts to impose unilateral measures on Israel will not achieve anything - to the contrary," Lieberman.
"Every state that truly wishes to promote a solution to the conflict must behave responsibly and make it clear to the Palestinians that decisions are made only around the negotiating table," he said.
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 Monday by Jordan after it had been agreed upon by Arab states, failed to obtain the minimum nine votes from the 15-member council, with the U.S. and Australia voting against.
The United Kingdom, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Korea and Lithuania abstained from voting, while Jordan, France, Russia, China, Argentina, Chad, Chile and Luxembourg voted in favor.
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 the pre-1967 borders.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas earlier threatened to sever "all forms of coordination" with Israel and join the International Criminal Court if the Council failed to adopt the resolution.
U.S.-brokered direct 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.
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