Global recognition of Palestine underscores US and Israel’s isolation at the UN

The genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza according to an independent commission appointed by the United Nations, along with the recognition of Palestinian statehood by key U.S. partners and allies such as France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada (the latter three did so this past Sunday), will monopolize the opening of the 80th session of the U.N. General Assembly, which is being held this week at the organization’s headquarters in New York.

The umpteenth U.S. veto of a Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza last Thursday has further highlighted the growing isolation of Washington and its protégé Israel on the international stage after nearly two years of war.

Starting this Monday, more countries will officially and symbolically recognize Palestine (a dozen are expected to do so), in a step the global community considers essential to ending decades of conflict through the so-called two-state solution, where the Israeli and Palestinian states will theoretically be on equal footing. The starting point will be the so-called High-Level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, a U.N. initiative co-sponsored by France and Saudi Arabia that was launched in July and at which, for the first time, the Arab bloc called on Hamas to lay down its weapons and relinquish power in Gaza.

Hamas’s departure is a fundamental requirement for the day after, and one of the points on which, according to the British newspaper The Guardian, several foreign ministries are negotiating, with London at the forefront, to prevent the major week of global diplomacy from being derailed by Palestinian recognition. The U.N.-backed roadmap or reconstruction plan — the antithesis of the vast real estate deals that some Israeli ministers envision for the Gaza Strip — involves on a one-year technocratic government, an international peacekeeping force, Hamas’s relinquishment of power, and a rejection of the mass deportation of Palestinians. None of these points is new: all were formulated more or less explicitly at the two-state conference held in July.

London, which had conditioned recognition of Palestine on the achievement of a ceasefire in Gaza, is discussing in detail the U.N.-backed roadmap with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has warned that the Israeli threat to annex the occupied West Bank is a completely predictable reciprocal response to the wave of recognitions, which will bring the number of countries that recognize a Palestinian state to 156, out of the 193 members of the U.N. At the same time, the plans being considered by the White House, which, in practice, support the Israeli annexation of Gaza and the West Bank, are anathema to European and Gulf leaders, who were very proactive at the conference.

Palestine will be the undisputed protagonist of the 80th U.N. General Assembly, despite Washington’s obstacles to the participation of its representatives — it denied them visas at the end of August — and the increasingly explicit evidence about the true nature of the Israeli military offensive in the Strip (as well as the West Bank, where settler violence is added). That’s why the run-up to the U.N.’s big week has already been as eventful as the gathering itself is expected to be.

Last week, an overwhelming majority of countries in the General Assembly expressed their support for the two-state solution and urged Israel to commit to the creation of a Palestinian state, through a non-binding resolution like all those that emerge from the U.N. plenary session. On Thursday, the U.S. vetoed the sixth resolution — this one binding — in the Security Council, the U.N.’s executive body, demanding an immediate ceasefire and the release of the hostages, as well as facilitating the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave. Each veto contributes to deepening the gap between the two partners and the rest of the world.

Two days earlier, the Donald Trump administration had called the Human Rights Council “morally bankrupt” for commissioning an investigation by an independent group of experts that found that Israel is perpetrating genocide in Gaza. “It is long overdue that the [Commission] be eliminated and that its anti-Semitic witch-hunt be put to an end,” added the acting U.S. representative to the U.N. The accusation of antisemitism wielded by the U.S. and Israel is used for everything, from silencing protests at university campuses, to violating international law, and denigrating the U.N., to which Washington has taken months to appoint an ambassador. The U.S. and Israel are also on the same page when it comes to discrediting the organization.

Washington’s latest veto comes as nearly half of Americans believe Israel has gone “too far” in the Gaza Strip, according to a recent Associated Press-NORC poll. This is 10 points higher than in November 2023, when 40% considered the Israeli offensive excessive.

To circumvent the U.S. entry ban — which violates the agreements that bind the U.S., as host country, to the U.N. — the General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution this Friday to allow Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, to participate remotely. He will be able to do so by videoconference both in Monday’s important meeting and in the Assembly’s debates. Only five countries, led by the U.S. and Israel, rejected this option, in a further display of international isolation. The fact that Israel has been ignoring binding Security Council resolutions on Palestine for decades makes the U.S. veto almost irrelevant in practice, though not in substance: as in the case of the invasion of Ukraine under the Russian veto, the paralysis of the U.N.’s executive body does nothing to mitigate the conflict.

But Washington’s hurdles obstacles have not been able to prevent Palestine, which has been a Permanent Observer State since 2012 and which saw its prerogatives within the organization expanded a year ago, from becoming the protagonist of this week’s events, overshadowing other ones such as the commemoration of the organization’s 80th anniversary, debates on development goals, and the presentation of the Global Dialogue on AI Governance.

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