Egypt does favour for Israel, Trump and withdraws UN Security Council motion on settlements, sets off diplomatic tussle. Egypt is facing some diplomatic backlash for abandoning a UN Security Council resolution declaring all Israeli settlements on Palestinian land to be illegal, which ended up passing after the United States unexpectedly did not exercise its veto power and instead chose to abstain.

After Israel caught wind of the United States’ intention to abstain from voting, rather than use its veto power as is customary with resolutions condemning Israel, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu contacted US president-elect Donald Trump, who in turn contacted President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, BBC reported. El Sisi and Trump came to an agreement that saw Egypt request to delay the vote, and ultimately withdraw from the resolution altogether.

New Zealand, Malaysia, Venezuela, and Senegal picked up the resolution and pressed ahead with the vote without Egypt’s sponsorship the next day, Reuters reports, although Egypt did vote in favor of the resolution when the vote was finally held.

Embarrassment or banking credit with two top diplomatic partners? Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abou Zeid said that “Egypt did not realize that the consultations reached [by the UN’s member states] were enough to pass the resolution,” and that the decision was made after “carefully weighing” the options, according to Ahram Online. As the only Arab representative in the 15-member body, Egypt has unsurprisingly been on the receiving end of significant criticism for abandoning the resolution. Domestic talking heads are calling the move “embarrassing to [Egypt’s] position on a local, regional, and international level.” A more realpolitik reading is that Egypt did a solid for two of its most important diplomatic partners, in part to bank credit with the incoming president of the United States.