Egypt delayed a potential showdown vote at the Security Council on the resolution after pressure from the Israelis, a Western official said Thursday. That put off a potential standoff between the US and Israel and prompted what some analysts called unprecedented interference from the US President-elect.

But the Israeli official told CNN that his country also approached the Trump campaign after it felt that it had failed to persuade the Obama administration to veto the planned vote. The official said that Israel "implored the White House not to go ahead and told them that if they did, we would have no choice but to reach out to President-elect Trump."

"We did reach out to the President-elect and are deeply appreciative that he weighed in, which was not a simple thing to do," the official said.

Trump called Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi to discuss the UN Security Council vote, according to a diplomatic source familiar with the call, which was made after the Israelis asked Trump to weigh in.

Publicly, the resolution drew condemnations from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump, who called on the White House to veto it. Having a President-elect weigh in to influence US policy is highly unusual, analysts said.

"It's unprecedented that a President-elect would pronounce on a matter of US policy before he became president," said Aaron David Miller, a vice president at the Wilson Center, "let alone say publicly that the administration should not vote for the resolution."

Trump transition spokesman Jason Miller said the transition team gave the White House a heads up before it sent the statement out Thursday morning about the Security Council vote.

Trump's election has brought the fraught Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the fore in recent days, with his appointment of an ambassador designate to Israel who supports Israeli settlement construction and his call for the US Embassy to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a highly sensitive issue designated for final peace talks since Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital as well.

His attempt to publicly pressure the White House on the vote highlights a split between his incoming government and the Obama administration, which has grown increasingly frustrated by Israeli settlement construction that it has repeatedly warned could foreclose the possibility of a two-state solution.

The Egyptians, who sponsored the resolution, told the Security Council they wanted to postpone the vote -- which had been set for 3 p.m. ET -- until after an Arab League meeting Thursday afternoon to review the text.

The postponement put off a chance for the Obama administration to make a strong statement of disapproval about Israeli settlement building, widely considered illegal under international law.

While the US makes a point of shielding Israel at the UN and other international organizations, a senior US official said that this time, the administration was debating whether to abstain or vote yes. That marks a departure, and even the public admission of an internal debate serves to show how unhappy the administration is with the Israeli government.

The White House was not considering a veto, the US official said, but added that if the resolution is amended, US officials will need to review it before deciding how to vote.

Trump, meanwhile, made his unhappiness with the resolution clear, saying in a statement that the US should issue a veto if it is brought to a vote.

"As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations between the parties, and not through the imposition of terms by the United Nations," Trump said. "This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis."

Trump's statement put the White House in a bind and "undermines US credibility," said Miller of the Wilson Center. Even if the Obama administration decided to back the resolution, Miller said, it would be clear to the rest of the international community that the incoming administration wouldn't stand by it.

"It's fortunate for them the Egyptians are walking away," Miller said of the White House.

As recently as October, the US berated Israel for announcing plans to build a new settlement, part of a string of Israeli construction activity that could eventually bisect the West Bank, making it physically impossible to form a contiguous Palestinian state....read more at CNN