The decision by UNESCO to suspend the voting rights of the US and Israel over unpaid dues to UNESCO as a result of the organization's admitting the Palestinians two years ago comes against the background of widespread perceptions that the US has long been using its position in international organizations to block Palestinian interests and to promote those of Israel. The US has vetoed some 42 UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israel since the early 1970s. More recently, the Palestinian attempt to secure full UN membership failed because of US resistance in the Security Council, where Washington made it clear that it would use its veto power to block the Palestinian bid. The US has also long used either the threat of reduced funding, or outright withdrawal, as a way of shaping UNESCO's programs. In 1984, the US formally withdrew from UNESCO as a result of what it called the organization's anti-Western policies. It returned in 2003, only to cancel its funding in 2011 which totaled $240 million, or some 22 percent of UNESCO's budget. Here there is absurd logic and inconsistency in US policy concerning the Palestinians. Washington has laws that prohibit funding to any UN agency that implies recognition of the Palestinians' demands for their own state but at the same time the US is encouraging the Palestinians to continue in US-sponsored peace talks with Israel primarily aimed at realizing a Palestinian state. The contradiction is simply stunning. The loss of voting rights by the US and Israel, which had also pulled its funding, objecting to what it called unilateral attempts by the Palestinians to gain recognition of statehood, does not mean that either country has been ejected from UNESCO. However, it does mean that both will no longer have the right to help shape the organization's programs. The American-UNESCO spat has actually hurt both sides. The US is on track to becoming a toothless UNESCO member with a weakened voice in international programs, but the withdrawal of US funding has plunged UNESCO into a funding crisis and has forced it to cut programs. However, the US is blinking first. So concerned is the US that President Obama has requested legislative authority to allow it to continue to pay its dues to UN agencies that admit the Palestinians as a member state “when doing so is in the US national interest.” While the US and Israel are having problems at the UN, the Palestinians are doing quite nicely there, recently voting for the first time in the General Assembly since they were admitted a year ago. Admittedly, the ballot cast was on a procedural routine matter but it was an act that has brought Palestine a step closer to full UN membership. The Palestinians want to accede to a number of international organizations and possibly sign the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court in The Hague from which they can take Israel to task for its war crimes. As such, the Palestinians can only be expected to want to get further footholds in the UN as the peace process quickly unravels over Israeli plans to continue building Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The US has characterized UNESCO's move as a misguided attempt to bypass the two-decade old peace process and says that only a resumption of peace talks ending in a treaty with Israel can result in Palestinian statehood. But with the peace talks in real danger of sinking, the best bet for Palestinians is to buttress their UN standing.
