It seems mazel tovs are in order for the US. They have secured the good will of the country they often seek the most: Israel. The dust had not yet settled on America blocking Palestine’s UN membership bid that it has been kicked up once again by the US cutting off funding to UNESCO as it has admitted Palestine as a full member.
How prominently Israel figures in the American cost-benefit calculus is evident from the fact that they were quite literally bound by law to protect Israeli interests. A law passed in 1990 by Congress stipulated that the US would have to scratch funding to any body that admits Palestine. Though the Congress could have side-stepped it, that laws like these exist means that they won’t. It matters scant to them that Palestine won inclusion by an overwhelmingly lopsided 106-14 vote. What matters is that the engines of their electoral machinery remain well-greased.
Though there might be strategic gains for the Palestinian struggle for rights and justice, this membership, if it passes through, will largely be symbolic. The real significance of this is the recognition that comes with this and the concretisation of the idea that the world at large supports a Palestinian state. But it is a world at large that does not include the US. They are still the bulwark against any meaningful progress on the issue.
The internal machinations of their political system and the fact that their rightist media obfuscates the issue (we can relate) to an extent that Israel is the victim and even reasoned critique of Zionism is anti-Semitism, it is nigh impossible for any admin to go against Israel. So much so, that a sitting president was forced to eat his words on Palestinian statehood in front of the entire world.
The words hypocrisy, imperialist double standards etc etc will be thrown around and this is a case where the shoe fits. The US is the self-appointed moral compass of the world and in the belly of he beast where this conflict is concerned. The US’ centrality in this configuration means that they can be taken to task for their sins, of omission and commission.
The US’ internal politics aside, Israel’s case has no ground to stand on. With the US losing much of it political clout with its economic troubles, the Arab spring changing the lay of the land in the ME and anti-Americanism in Muslims escalating, the US can keep resisting this at its own peril.
