The U.S.-Israel friendship has been tested mightily over the past 68 years yet remains solid. When other nations were walking away, Israelis knew this nation's readiness to defend them politically as well as militarily was always without question. This remains the case, despite the U.S. failure to veto a controversial Security Council resolution last week. The resolution called Israel's West Bank settlements a "flagrant violation under international law."

Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, stated in her remarks Friday that successive U.S. administrations going all the way back to Ronald Reagan have criticized the establishment of Jewish settlements beyond Israel's pre-1967 borders. Successive Republican and Democratic administrations have consistently pressed all sides to the Arab-Israeli conflict to settle their differences peacefully while insisting that the acquisition of territory by force is unacceptable under international law.

The entire world order depends on adherence to this principle, which applied to Russia's unlawful occupation and annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in 2014 as well as Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Israel acceded to this principle when it embraced Security Council Resolution 242 following the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel took military control of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The 1978 Camp David accords led to Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel seized from Egypt during the 1967 war. Israel also unilaterally evacuated 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza in 2005 and ceded full control to the Palestinians.

There's solid legal and ethical logic underlying those precedents. The logic only breaks down when it is applied to some actors but not to others. Arab states have gambled and lost in their repeated wars to destroy Israel. Palestinians have failed to respect Israel's sovereignty while insisting that Israel acknowledge theirs.

A lack of recognized borders further muddles the question of who's right. West Bank settlement expansion is proceeding apace, largely because no one can claim territorial sovereignty there.

Palestinians hope eventually to have their own state in the West Bank and Gaza, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he supports that goal. The big question is how viable a Palestinian state would be if Jewish settlements keep eating away at the available territory.

The icy personal relationship between President Barack Obama and Netanyahu no doubt influenced last week's U.S. decision not to veto the resolution but label it as "counterproductive." Obama also appears to be thumbing his nose at Donald Trump's incoming administration, which appears to favor easing restraints on new settlement activity.

It's heartbreaking and frustrating to see diplomacy taking a back seat to grudge-settling. Netanyahu was correct when he responded last week that "friends don't take friends to the Security Council." Friends do, however, organize interventions when it's time to steer loved ones away from a reckless course.

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