Israeli officials contacted Trump's transition team at a "high level" after failing to persuade US officials to veto the Security Council draft resolution and asked him to intervene, the official said. Two Western officials said that President Barack Obama had intended to abstain from the vote.
Trump then sent a tweet urging a US veto and spoke by phone to Egypt's president, who abruptly ordered his country's delegation to postpone the vote scheduled for Thursday on the resolution they had sponsored.
Egypt says its president received a call hours after the postponement from President-elect Donald Trump in which they both agreed to give the incoming US administration a chance to try and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A statement from the Egyptian presidency says the two men spoke by phone early Friday and agreed on "the importance of giving a chance for the new American administration to deal in a comprehensive way with the different aspects of the Palestinian issue with the aim of achieving a comprehensive and a final resolution."
The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has had an acrimonious relationship with Obama, believes the United States had long planned the council vote in coordination with the Palestinians and intended to use it to "ambush" Israel on the thorny settlements issue, the official said.
"It was a violation of a core commitment to protect Israel at the UN," the official said.
Israel had warned the Obama administration they would reach out to Trump if Washington decided to go ahead with the abstention, and Netanyahu's aides did so when they realized the United States set on this course, the official said.
The Israeli government appreciated Trump's efforts, the official said. "Israelis deeply appreciate one of the great pillars of the US-Israel alliance: the willingness over many years of the US to stand up in the UN and veto anti-Israel resolutions," Netanyahu said in a video he released a few hours before the planned vote.
"I hope the US won't abandon this policy; I hope it will abide by the principles set by President Obama himself in his speech in the UN in 2011: That peace will come not through UN resolutions, but only through direct negotiations between the parties," he added.
"And that's why this proposed resolution is bad. It's bad for Israel; it's bad for the United States; and it's bad for peace."
Netanyahu also took to Twitter in the dead of night in Israel to appeal to Obama, tweeting at 3:28am that the United States "should veto the anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council on Thursday."
Members of Netanyahu's right-wing government have increasingly warmed to Trump, who has made a controversial promise to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Relations between Obama and Netanyahu were severely strained over the US-backed Iran nuclear deal.
With the clock ticking down on Obama's tenure, Israel remains concerned that the resolution condemning Jewish settlements could still go ahead with another sponsoring country—with continued US support—before the president leaves office on January 20, the official said.