Obama Discusses Challenges for Democrats; Israel Upset With U.S. Over Settlement Slap.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Hello. I'm Jake Tapper in for Wolf Blitzer. It is 1:00 p.m. here in Washington,</s>D.C., 6: 00 p.m. in London, 8:00 p.m. in Jerusalem wherever you're watching from around the world. Thanks for joining us. We're going to start with anger from Israel aimed that the United States more specifically at President Obama at issue is that United Nations Security Council Resolution condemning the construction of Israeli settlements in those disputed territories. Israel wanted the U.S. to block the resolution. The Obama administration decided to abstain which meant to the resolution could continue going forward in response. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned the U.S. Ambassador to his office and the Israeli prime minister has gone so far as to accuse the United States of conspiring with Palestinians to harass Israel. Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer tried to explain Israel's anger on CNN "New Day" today.</s>RON DERMER, ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES: It's an old story that the United Nations gangs up against Israel. What is new is that the United States did not stand up and oppose that gang up. And what is outrageous is that the United States was actually behind that gang up. To bring a resolution to the Security Council is not just something that Israel opposes. It's something that Barack Obama opposed. In September 2011, he stood at the United Nations and he said, these issues should not be handled at the U.N. Security Council. They should be handled through negotiations. We agree on that. We have a disagreement with the administration over settlements but you don't take, as the prime minister just said, you don't take your friends to the Security Council. As biased as the U.N. is., we are a member of the community of nations and will fight for our rights there but I hope that the new administration will have a comprehensive review of policies at the U.N. not just towards Israel but also towards the United States. The U.N. is a cesspool of anti-Americanism and anti-Israel activity. I hope the new administration with bipartisan support in Congress will look at those programs and not simply give a blank check to all of this anti-American and anti-Israel hostility.</s>TAPPER: This is the first U.N. Security Council Resolution criticizing Israel that has passed during the Obama administration. One, that compares to the President George W. Bush years where six passed. Ronald Reagan, 21 passed. Obama's critics however said this resolution was different since it defined the settlements as illegal which could have ramifications. Our Oren Liebermann is live for us in Jerusalem. Athena Jones is with the president in Honolulu Hawaii and here with me in Studio is CNN's Elise Labott. Oren, let me start with you. Ambassador Dermer promised that this is just the beginning of their fight, where might it go from here?</s>OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hasn't backed off any language he's used without question hardest criticism we've seen from the Netanyahu government directed right at President Obama. Netanyahu has made it very clear he thinks this action is lashing out that Obama was in his words measured, responsible and vigorous. He also says that that this won't hurt Israel's standing in the long run that country will come to respect Israel for standing up to itself. What Netanyahu has made clear, however is that, he's done working with president Obama as Ron Dermer, the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. just made clear Netanyahu and his entire government are looking for President-elect Trump who promises to be much friendlier to Israeli government of Netanyahu.</s>TAPPER: All right. Oren, Thank you so much. Elise, Israel says that they have evidence that U.S. was working with Palestinians and others on this resolution but they're going to or they have not yet revealed that evidence publicly publicly. What are you hearing?</s>ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, look a Palestinian delegation was here a few weeks ago talking with Secretary of State John Kerry. I think it has something to do with information they have about that. They've been very kind of coy about what evidence they have. But, look, this administration has known about this resolution for some time. It's been in the works for about a year and Secretary Kerry was in New Zealand, he did talk to the foreign minister of New Zealand who voted for the resolution. The administration has been coordinating on language because it needed to know whether it would be able to vote for something. But what the Israelis are charging, whether it would be able to vote for something. But what the Israelis are charging is that President Obama and Secretary Kerry orchestrated this, that they were involved in kind of drafting this and pushing this along. I think somewhere in the middle is probably the truth. The administration says, "Oh, we didn't draft it. We didn't put it forward", but they certainly were involved making sure that it was a certain text in getting it to the Security Council.</s>TAPPER: All right, Elise, Thank you. Athena, is President Obama sending a message here to Benjamin Netanyahu after a very contentious eight years and no lost love between them?</s>ATHENA JONES, CNN GENERAL ASSIGNMENT CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Jake. I think it's fair to say that he is sending a message and that message is that the White House, the Obama administration agrees with much of the international community that the continued building, the continued construction of these settlements on disputed lands is not helpful to the peace process and not helpful to any eventual two-state solution. The White House would argue that their position on this has been clear for years. Now, this may be a new low in this contentious relationship between these two leaders, but another recent low, you'll remember, was just last year. March of 2015 when Congressional Republicans without consulting the White House invited the Prime Minister to address a Joint Session of Congress to express his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal, he said that deal not only wouldn't work, but it could lead to the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel. So this has been a difficult relationship for some time. Netanyahu believes that President Obama is naive when it comes to issues with involving the Middle East. And, of course, president Obama has been talking since his campaign in 2008 about his willingness to engage with Iran. So there a lot of disagreement between these two men, this may be just the latest example of how difficult that relationship has been, and as you said, as we heard from Oren, Prime Minister Netanyahu, very much looking forward to the next administration. Jake?</s>TAPPER: All right. Athena Jones, Elise Labott, Oren Liebermann, thanks one and all. Let's bring in Michael Oren, he's the phone in Jerusalem. He is the former Israeli Ambassador to the United States. He's now a member of the parliament in Israel, the Knesset, and he's Deputy Minister of Diplomacy. Ambassador, thank you for joining us. We appreciate it.</s>MICHAEL OREN, MEMBER OF KNESSET AND DEPUTY MINISTER OF DIPLOMACY: Good to be with you, Jake.</s>TAPPER: So talk to me about the evidence your government claims to have that the U.S. actually drafted this resolution conspired to put it forward at the Security Council. What kind of evidence are we talking about?</s>OREN: Well, with that things that they have received from a -- they receive from other governments around the world who have been involved in this. And I think that we're not talking -- we're not disclosing those sources. I think that the Prime Minister's made it very clear that he believes that the -- that President Obama's administration has been instrumental in formulating this resolution and advancing it. That it's a pretty serious charge. I think the overwhelming sense in the state of Israel and I'm talking to you from the streets of Jerusalem. This is a sense of hurt, a sense of abandonment, a sense of outrage where I'm talking to you here. It's about a two hour drive from where 400,000 Syrians have been massacred. About a for hour drive from where the massacres occurring in Iraq from a civil war in Sinai about three hours and the United States and the Security Council are beating up on the newly term with democracy. It's very, very outrageous for us.</s>TAPPER: I guess one of the questions that the Obama administration would put to you is, how much longer can Israel call itself a democracy if you control vast swathe of territory in which Palestinians don't have the right of travel, the right to vote, are you not putting yourself with all of these settlements and without any sort of peace process actually going on, on a course to no longer be a democracy?</s>OREN: We hear the question quite often, but here's one answer, first of all, Palestinians have a right to travel. A 100,000 Palestinians enter Israel everyday. They laid about five minutes across the border in most cases. Palestinians can vote. They can vote for their own leadership. Their leadership has decided for 10 years now not to hold an election, because they know that President Mahmoud Abbas will be defeated by Hamas. We haven't stopped their election. So we have to deal with these untruths all the time, Jake, but the fact of the matter is we have been waiting for eight years at a negotiating table for the Palestinians to show up. Prime Minister Netanyahu has got to begin again that he's willing to negotiate directly with the Palestinian leadership without preconditions to reach a solution based and two states for two peoples and every time he has stuck on his hand in peace to President Abbas that has been swatted away, and now this resolution comes, which enables the Palestinians not only to overrun the peace process not to sit down at the table but to take Israel to court and brand Israel as an international criminal and the sanction and boycott us. And they're going to do that not to get a better two-state solution, but to take us down.</s>TAPPER: Do you think that -- is that why Israel seems to be making a much bigger deal out of this abstention by the United States and the U.N. Security Council? The one resolution, critical of Israel that Obama has permitted to happen as opposed to the six that happened during George W. Bush's administration or the three during Clinton or the 21 during Reagan? Is that the distinction, the idea that because of this resolution, now Israeli soldiers will be able to be taken to criminal -- the International Criminal Court?</s>OREN: It's not only these real soldiers, it's 600,000 citizens of State of Israel who live in areas which more than 50 years ago, were part of Jordan, which nobody remembers what these lines are in the City of Jerusalem anymore. My own kids wouldn't know what those lines are in the City of Jerusalem. It is taking the western wall, the coattail, the holiest site in Jerusalem and categorizing it as a legally occupied land. Any Jew who prays in the holiest place in Judaism is going to be branded an international criminal. Now, think about that. That does not -- the Reagan Administration denouncing us for blowing up the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, by the way, they thanked this court later. But it is a resolution which you can have profoundly, profoundly harmful effects to this state. And what can we say after eight years? I mean, we've had now two major blows to our security. The first was Iran nuclear deal, the second is this resolution. We've dealt with many, many blows by securing the past, but never have we dealt with blows that have been dealt by our number one ally in the world, by the United States of America. And that is why this state has been reacting in the way it has and why it feels a sense of outrage and hurt.</s>TAPPER: Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, thank you so much. Happy Hanukkah. Coming up --</s>OREN: Thank you.</s>TAPPER: -- President-Elect Trump says he will shut down his charitable foundation to cut down on potential conflicts of interest. But it's not as easy as just shutting off the lights. We'll explain. And fans come to say goodbye to pop icon, George Michael. Stay with us.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's like losing our brother.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah. It's like loosing a family member.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah.