“The Security Council resolution against the settlements that was adopted last Friday [Dec. 23] because no veto was cast by the US is not an isolated event,” an Israeli source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “We are talking about a chain reaction. It is a declaration of war on the part of the American administration against Israel and Israel’s counter-war declaration against the administration and the countries that supported the decision. It could very well be that the culmination of all this is still before us.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted at the opening of a Cabinet meeting Dec. 25 that Israel has conclusive evidence proving, according to him, that the Americans were behind Security Council Resolution 2334, affirming the illegality of Israeli settlements on the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The resolution has shaken up Israel and is causing its leaders to lose all vestiges of diplomatic propriety regarding anything related to President Barack Obama and his administration. “Who is Obama? Obama is history,” Culture Minister Miri Regev told Channel 2 on Dec. 27.

In a conversation with Al-Monitor, a highly placed Israeli source detailed some of the information that flowed to Jerusalem on the heels of the resolution and galvanized Netanyahu and his ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, to open a public trial, so to speak, against the Obama administration for what Netanyahu’s associates qualified as a flagrant betrayal and abandonment of Israel.

“It was not an innocent event,” the source said. “This was not a motion [brought by some other country] that the Americans examined and then decided, by coincidence, not to cast a veto against. Instead, it was an event orchestrated by the Americans, big time. They were very active behind the scenes in formulating and then promoting the bill, until the decisive vote. When their machinations got stuck due to [President-elect] Donald Trump’s intervention, the administration went into emergency mode and succeeded in speeding up the proposal to the Security Council the very next day. The voices [that sponsored the proposal] were those of Senegal and New Zealand, but the hands were the hands of Obama.”