[Salon] Leaked Cables Show White House Opposes Palestinian Statehood

FM: John Whitbeck

The UN Security Council's vote on upgrading the UN status of the State of Palestine has now been postponed until tomorrow, at 1500 New York time (1900 GMT).

As reported in the INTERCEPT article at the link transmitted below, the U.S. government, having failed in its effort to browbeat President Mahmoud Abbas into withdrawing Palestine's status upgrade application (https://www.alquds.com/en/posts/117173), has, unsurprisingly, been offering inducements and threatening punishments to council members to try to limit the number of affirmative votes to eight, thereby sparing the U.S. from the embarrassment and self-humiliation of technically vetoing Palestine's application. Indeed, the American effort to do so may explain the delay in the vote.

https://theintercept.com/2024/04/17/united-nations-biden-palestine-statehood

This American effort should be a serious challenge, since eight of the current council members have extended diplomatic recognition to the State of Palestine, three (France, Japan and Switzerland) voted in 2012 to upgrade Palestine's UN status to observer state, thereby accepting that Palestine meets the international law criteria for state status, and one (Slovenia) has recently announced its intention to extend diplomatic recognition to the State of Palestine.

Unfortunately, like most aspects of international relations in recent decades, this vote will not be about legality or morality. It will be about power and fear.

The ultimate question in tomorrow's vote is whether, if there were to be at least nine affirmative votes in favor of Palestine, so that the only obstacle to Palestine's full UN membership would be a negative vote by the United States, the U.S. government would dare to further outrage most of mankind by vetoing Palestine.

While most commentators assume that a veto would be inevitable, I persist in harboring a slim hope that, particularly since the U.S. House of Representatives is likely to vote on Saturday to make a further tribute payment to Israel of $26 BILLION (double the amount originally sought by President Biden) to help finance Israel's genocidal assault against the Palestinian people, which would constitute a breathtaking display of contempt for international law and international public opinion, the U.S. government might stun the world by not daring, at the same time, to veto Palestine at the United Nations.

If the U.S. government does succeed in blocking Palestine's application, whether by inducements and threats or by a veto, this will constitute yet more evidence that the balance of power and fear in the Israeli-American relationship overwhelmingly favors Israel, with the purchased and/or frightened American political class not even considering the interests of their own country and people (or even recent opinion polls) but, rather, simply taking orders and paying tribute (https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/05/12/its-not-american-aid-to-israel-its-tribute).