The Palestinians will seek a vote on their bid for full membership of UNESCO next week, Foreign Minister Riyal al-Malki said on Wednesday, despite what he called US threats to pull funding from the UN cultural agency. The initiative is part of a Palestinian campaign, opposed by the United States, for recognition as a state in the UN system — a move the Palestinians hope will strengthen their standing vis-à-vis Israel. UNESCO is the first UN agency the Palestinians have sought to join as a full member since applying for full membership of the United Nations on Sept. 23.
The bid for a full UN seat, which can be granted only by the Security Council, is destined to fail because of opposition by Washington, which has a veto in the forum. But UNESCO is one agency the Palestinians can join as a full member regardless of their wider UN status.
Malki said a Palestinian representative would address UNESCO’s General Conference on Sunday and the Palestinians were aiming for a vote the same day. “We are trying with all effort, through our ambassador in UNESCO, to have a vote on our request for membership of UNESCO at the time that we give the speech,” he said in an interview with Voice of Palestine radio broadcast on Wednesday.
“We hope that we will succeed in this effort despite our recognition of great pressure which the United States of America is leading inside UNESCO,” Malki said. He said there were “great threats … that if Palestine’s membership of UNESCO is approved, the United States will stop its assistance to that organisation”. A source at UNESCO, however, told Reuters that Malki and the Palestinian delegation were expected on Monday, with a vote seen later the same day. A general conference of UNESCO members on Wednesday did not address the scheduling of a vote but that could be addressed at another conference due on Friday, the source said.
AUTOMATIC CUTOFF
A vote in favour of Palestinian membership would trigger an automatic cutoff in US funding to the agency under US law. The United States provides 22 percent of UNESCO’s funding. The UNESCO board decided on Oct. 6 to allow the 193 member states to vote on the Palestinians’ application for full admission — a bid signalling new Palestinian determination to ignore pressure from Washington, one of the Palestinian Authority’s main donors, but also Israel’s most important ally. In a letter published by the Washington Post on Monday, UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova pleaded with the United States to continue funding the organisation.
“The UNESCO-US relationship is so intertwined that I cannot imagine the United States disengaging,” she wrote. “Can we imagine UNESCO’s World Heritage program without the contribution of such universal landmarks as Yellowstone National Park? Can the United States really withdraw from the UNESCO’s work on tsunami early warning in the Caribbean and the Pacific?” The United States views the Palestinian quest for recognition as a state in the UN system as a unilateral move unhelpful to US efforts to revive peace negotiations with Israel, which it says are the only way forward.
The Palestinians say peace talks with Israel, which also opposes the Palestinian UN initiative, have brought them no closer to their goal of independence in the two decades since the negotiations first got under way. The prospect of the Palestinians seeking full membership of other UN agencies heavily funded by the United States could threaten US financial support for bodies including the World Health Organisation.
