The Biden administration is seeking to cast itself as having averted a diplomatic crisis at the United Nations over Israeli settlements. America, the AP reports, “successfully managed to forestall a contentious Security Council resolution” that would have ordered Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities.” Instead the Biden administration got the Israelis and the Palestinians to agree to a deal.

For Israel, the deal comes with more strings than a harpsichord from hell. It is to suspend “unilateral” action in Judea and Samaria, and announce no new building projects. Plus forswear — for a few months — demolition of Palestinian homes in response to terrorist attacks. And to pare down military activity, another check on its efforts to combat terrorism. For all that, America is supporting a “presidential statement” from the Council critical of Israel.       

This is a case of backwards runs diplomacy until reels the mind. A supposedly magnificent deal by which a supposed crisis was supposedly averted. It was necessary only because the Biden administration didn’t want to veto a Palestinian proposal. Any pro-Israel American administration — Reagan’s, say, or Trump’s, or Truman’s — would have vetoed the measure proudly, without charge to the Jewish state.

Instead, the Biden administration forced Israel to commit to, as the AP put it, “not expanding settlements until at least August.” Meantime the Palestinian side would have to wait until August (a six-month blink of the eye) to resume pursuing “action against Israel at the U.N. and other international bodies such as the World Court, the International Criminal Court and the U.N. Human Rights Council.” 

What in the world could be the advantage to any of that? The answer, the AP reports, is that a “veto of the settlements resolution would have been a political headache” for Mr. Biden as “he approaches the 2024 presidential election.” No kidding. Yet a veto, accompanied by a strong speech denouncing Israel’s enemies, is precisely for what the moment called. Instead, the Palestinian Arabs have gotten something for nothing, courtesy of Washington.    

Mr. Biden, the AP reports, “is struggling to balance his opposition to Israeli settlements and his support for a two-state resolution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict with moves to improve ties with the Palestinians that have wide backing among his progressive supporters.” Precisely. He’s appeasing his party’s leftists, via backroom politics on the world stage. He lacks the stomach to do what would be done by any president for an embattled ally.

Part of the story, according to the AP, is that the administration “will be looking to the UAE and other countries sympathetic to the Palestinians to vote in favor of a resolution in the 193-member General Assembly on Thursday condemning Russia for invading Ukraine and calling for a cessation of hostilities and the immediate withdrawal of all Russian forces.” In other words, a deal with Russia in Ukraine at Israel’s expense.

This all strikes us as illuminating the degree to which the Democratic and Republican parties have grown apart on policy toward Israel. “This is Obama 2.0.,” Nikki Haley, President Trump’s ex-envoy at the UN, tells us in response to a query. “At the United Nations, you get nowhere with abstentions and dodges. When our friends are unfairly attacked, our critics and enemies must know they will run straight into an American veto.”

Obama 1.0 at the United Nations saw America, in December 2016, abstain from Resolution 2334, which asserted that Israel’s settlements in Judea and Samaria have “no legal validity” and amount to “flagrant violations” of international law. All other members of the Council voted for it. That betrayal is the background — and apparently, prelude — for this latest act of appeasement masquerading as dealmaking.