US Veto on Palestinian UN membership

Speaks volume for Jewish control on US politics

By Latheef Farook

On Thursday 18 April 2024 ,the  United Nations Security Council took up Palestine Authority’ s applicati0n to become a full UN member .However United States, world’s sole super power where  politicians    were made and unmade  and politics were shaped  by pro Israeli  Jewish lobbies, vetoed this widely backed U.N. resolution.

Western media has incorrectly reported the vote as one to determine Palestinian statehood. The resolution, sponsored by Algeria, was instead to grant full U.N. membership, with voting rights in the General Assembly, to Palestine, which is already recognized by 140 countries.

The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 12 in favor, the United States opposed and two abstentions, from the United Kingdom and Switzerland. U.S. allies France, Japan and South Korea supported the resolution. Those who voted in favour  include Algeria, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Guyana, Ecuador, Russia, China, France, Slovenia, Malta, Japan, Republic of Korea.

Palestinian statehood was recognized by the U.N. General Assembly in November 2012 when it was given non-member Observer State status.

Algerian U.N. Ambassador Amar Bendjama, the Arab representative on the council who introduced the resolution, called Palestine’s admission “a critical step toward rectifying a longstanding injustice” and said that “peace will come from Palestine’s inclusion, not from its exclusion.”

Russia, which voted with the majority  for full membership, walked out of the meeting just before Israeli U.N. Ambassador  was about to begin speaking.

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said this marked the fifth time the United States has vetoed a Council resolution since the start of the current hostilities in Gaza.The US “once again demonstrated what they really think of the Palestinians”, he said. “For Washington, Palestinians do not deserve to have their own State. They are only a barrier on the path towards realising the interests of Israel.”

He said at present, an absolute majority of the global community supports Palestine’s application to become a full member of the UN. “Today’s use of the veto by the US delegation is a hopeless attempt to stop the inevitable course of history. The results of the vote, where Washington was practically in complete isolation, speak for themselves,” he said.

In fact the resolution, if passed, would have  given full United Nations membership for Palestine, a goal the Palestinians have long sought though  Israel has  been working from the very inception of its creation  in 1948 worked to prevent.

The irony is Palestinians were the sons and daughters of  Palestine which was turned into  Israel   by the British Mandatory power  for Jews brought in from outside after driving out Palestinians from their lands and homes  by means of genocides and massacres .

On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 recommending the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states (along with an international zone encompassing Jerusalem and Bethlehem )

Israel enjoys full membership from 1948 when the UN was blackmailed and passed a resolution partitioning Palestine to  establish  Israel.

United Kingdom followed by United States played decisive  role in making Israel a full member of UN while Palestinians to date were deprived of it though the whole world supports move to make Palestine a full membership.

The resolution would have recommended that the 193-member U.N. General Assembly, where there are no vetoes, approve Palestine becoming the 194th member of the United Nations.

Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour told the council after the vote: “The fact that this resolution did not pass will not break our will and it will not defeat our determination”. “We will not stop in our effort,” he said. “The state of Palestine is inevitable. It is real. Perhaps they see it as far away, but we see it as near.”

This is the second Palestinian attempt for full membership and comes as the war in Gaza has put the more than 75-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict at center stage.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas first delivered the Palestinian Authority’s application for U.N. membership in 2011. It failed because the Palestinians didn’t get the required minimum support of nine of the Security Council’s 15 members.

They went to the General Assembly and succeeded by more than a two-thirds majority in having their status raised from a U.N. observer to a non-member observer state in 2012. That opened the door for the Palestinian territories to join U.N. and other international organizations, including the International Criminal Court.

Columnist Caitlin Johnstone said “what the U.S. actually wants is the same thing the Israelis want: for the Palestinians to go away, or lie down and submit completely, or otherwise stop being an inconvenience until they’re a forgotten footnote in the dustbin of history. But the U.S. can’t come right out and say this, so it pretends to support a two-state solution that Israel has spent years doing everything it can to ensure never happens. It’s a completely fictional resolution to a very real problem, but the alternative to supporting it is to admit you support continued apartheid, oppression, ethnic cleansing and genocide”.

So the U.S. maintains this ridiculous charade where it keeps pretending to support this fake non-solution, even while taking concrete actions which make it clear that it does not.

Meanwhile Palestinian freedom movement  Hamas condemned  the US veto  by Israel’s main ally and military backer  saying it was   expected ahead of the vote. Hamas  accused the US of standing “in the face of international will” by exercising its veto power and denying Palestinians full membership in the world body. The group said that it condemned “in the strongest terms the American position biased towards the occupation”, as it called on the international community “to exert pressure to go beyond the American will and support the struggle of our Palestinian people and their legitimate right to self-determination”.