Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled an upcoming visit of Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman after Ukraine voted in favor of a United Nations Security Council resolution against settlement construction in the Palestinian territory, Israeli media reported.
The two day-long visit was scheduled to occur on Dec. 27 and 28.
According to Groysman’s press secretary, the visit has been postponed indefinitely.
The 15-member UN Security Council voted to call for an end to Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory, demarcated as such after the 1967 war. The move passed with 14 votes. Ukraine voted in favor, while the United States abstained.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Israel have demanded that the resolution be vetoed.
According to the resolution, Israel’s settlements on Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, have “no legal validity.” It is the first resolution that the Security Council has adopted on the Israel-Palestine conflict in nearly eight years, news network Al Jazeera reported.
“Israel rejects this shameful anti-Israel resolution at the UN and will not abide by its terms,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office said.
Relations between Ukraine and Israel warmed after the visit of Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko to Israel in Dec. 2015 and a series of events in Lviv and Kyiv commemorating the Holocaust.
In September, Israel President Reuven Rivlin visited Ukraine to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre in Kyiv.
His visit was shortened due to the death of ex-President of Israel Shimon Peres on Sept. 28. During his statement in Ukrainian parliament, Rivlin said that the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists was involved in the killing of Jews during World War Two, sparking a debate.
On the economic side, the two countries discussed signing a free trade zone agreement. During the Ukraine-Israel economic forum in Kyiv in November, Knesset speaker Yuli-Yoel Edelstein said the agreement could be signed in 2017.
“Israel is one of Ukraine’s main trading partners in the Middle East,” Groysman said in a statement from his office. “Since 2012, the trade turnover between the two countries exceeds $1 billion every year (except reduction of mutual trade volumes in 2015).”
Over the first nine months of 2016, bilateral trade between the two nations decreased 10 percent, reaching $637 million.
