The US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have condemned Israel for building a security barrier that cuts into the West Bank.
The move came after Israel's military ordered 15 Palestinian detainees expelled from the West Bank to Gaza, a policy limited by Israeli courts and denounced by human rights groups in the past, as Israeli forces pressed ahead with a Gaza operation aimed at destroying weapons tunnels in a Palestinian refugee camp.
The new Palestinian prime minister sparred in public Tuesday with Yasser Arafat -- a sign that the rift between the two is deepening.
The developments added up to a continued freeze in Mideast peace efforts, with the prospect, instead, of renewed violence.
The veto on Tuesday night came after the US suggested additions to the document to call on all parties in the Middle East struggle to dismantle terrorist groups. But Syria, which had introduced the draft, went ahead with the vote anyway.
The Palestinian UN observer, Nasser Al-Kidwa, regretted the American decision and said there can be no "road map" peace process so long as Israel is building the barrier.
"You cannot have this construction of the expansionist wall and simply pretend that the road map exists," Al-Kidwa said. "It's either or."
The US was the only country to vote against the resolution, using its veto as one of five permanent members of the council. Four of the 15 members of the Security Council abstained: Bulgaria, Cameroon, Germany and Britain.
US Ambassador John Negroponte said the resolution "was unbalanced" and "did not further the goals of peace and security in the region."
Israel's UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman praised the veto, saying the resolution "failed to draw attention to Palestinian terrorism."
"It is a resolution which condemns the victims of terror rather than the terrorists themselves," Gillerman said.
After the vote, Syria's UN Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad said the US veto damaged its image and role in efforts toward a lasting peace.
"To be very frank, the image of the United States as a superpower, as a co-sponsor of the peace process, will definitely suffer," Mekdad said. "Do you think any Arab from Bahrain to Rabbat would accept such a biased position?"
Syria, the only Arab nation on the 15-member council, introduced the draft last Thursday on behalf of the 22-member Arab League.
The request for Security Council action came a week after the Israeli Cabinet approved an extension of the barrier that would protect Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank.
Before last week's decision, the barrier -- a network of fences, walls, razor wires and trenches -- had largely kept to the 1967 Israel-West Bank boundary known as the "Green Line," diverting in some places a few kilometers into the West Bank to enclose Jewish settlements.
In Israel, the military said expulsion orders issued Tuesday against 15 Palestinians held in Israeli custody were the only way to be sure the detainees would not return to terror activity. The military said most of them are members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups.
None participated directly in attacks on Israelis or had "blood on their hands," an army statement said, but all were accomplices to violence.
The detainees have two days to appeal the orders. They have already been moved to an army jail near the Gaza Strip.
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