The United States scrambled last week, but failed to contain the broad international rejection of its whimsical decision on occupied Jerusalem, including its traditional allies in Western Europe and the Middle East, many of whom were sharply critical of the White House break with years of international diplomatic consensus.
The bad hair day for the US began on Monday at the Security Council, where 14 other member-states, including US allies Britain and France, supported a resolution declaring “any decision and action, which purport to have altered the character, status and demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded”. Three days later, the resolution, worded almost identically, went to the General Assembly, where it passed with an overwhelming majority. The seven member-states that, along with Israel and the US, voted against the resolution were hardly diplomatic powerhouses: Guatemala, Honduras, Nauru, Palau, Micronesia and Togo.
No one in the General Assembly gave much thought to the imperious threat, on the eve of the vote, by Nikki Haley, the US ambassador, to “take names”. Rather, it was mocked. In fact, Bolivia’s ambassador, Sacha Lorenty, reportedly advised Haley that the first name she should write down in her black book was that of Bolivia. Then other ambassadors, from countries in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, adopted the same posture, seeing it as badge of honour to have defied American bullying — for bullying it was.
It wasn’t the first time that the US found itself the odd man out at the biggest diplomatic stage in the world. It has, over the years, suffered one humiliating defeat after another in its efforts to support Israel.
I had briefly covered the UN General Assembly back in 1997, when it voted, again overwhelmingly, to condemn Israel’s ongoing construction of a new Jewish colony in occupied East Jerusalem. Only Micronesia joined the US and Israel to vote against. You had to feel pity for Bill Richardson at the time, the newly-appointed American Ambassador to the UN, who was doing his darn best not to cringe at the position he found himself in — having to vote against a morally solid case and in favour of an occupying power that brazenly was breaking international law and defying countless UN resolutions. But that is the unenviable stance that American envoys have had to take — and let the record show, not always under duress — since 1947, when the resolution calling for the partition of Palestine came up for a vote at the General Assembly.
“By direct orders of the White House, the United States had exerted every form of pressure available to it on those nations in the UN opposed to partition or hesitant in their support for it,” wrote Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre in their iconic 1971 book, O Jerusalem. “President Truman had personally warned the US delegate to the UN, Herschel Johnson, to ‘damn well deliver the partition vote or there will be hell to pay’,” it said.
From Herschel Johnson then to Nikki Haley today, American ambassadors to the UN have used their clout as representatives of an influential big power to advance the interests of a two-bit occupying power.
From time to time, you would have an ambassador here and there who would balk at following orders to the letter, or who would at least bend the rules a bit in following them. Take Andrew Young, former US president Jimmy Carter’s choice to serve as ambassador to the international body in 1977. Not quite two years into his appointment, Young discovered that an upcoming report by the UN Division for Palestinian Rights called for the creation of a Palestinian state, and Washington wanted to somehow delay the report. Young met representatives of several Arab countries in order to convince them to agree to the delay. They went along, in principle, but insisted that the PLO also had to agree. On July 20, Young did the unspeakable: He met the UN’s Palestine Liberation Organisation representative at the apartment of the UN ambassador from Kuwait. It had to be a clandestine meeting, given the fact that the US had refused to talk to the Palestinians “unless they recognised Israel”. On August 10, news of the meeting became public when Mossad leaked its illegally-acquired transcript of the meeting to Newsweek magazine.
Four days later, Andrew Young, already in hot water for earlier criticising Israel as “stubborn and intransigent”, found his career as the first African-American envoy to the UN ruined. He was succeed by Donald McHenry, another African-American. In 1980, McHenry voted — one imagines, out of pique — for a resolution that condemned Israeli colonies in the occupied territories, which clearly included Jerusalem. Within hours, the then US president Carter was all over, apologising, calling it all a mistake that had resulted from a “failure in communication”. Moreover, the White House added that the president “did not intend for Jerusalem to be included in the resolution”. From then on, McHenry was heckled wherever he lectured on campuses for voting “in alliance with Israel’s enemies”.
By contrast, virtually all other US envoys just went merrily along with their government’s policy of kow-towing to the Israeli demand that the US go to lunatic extremes to support it.
True, last Thursday was a day of high drama at the UN, but it was also a day when people in the Arab world took the opportunity to say this to Washington: Stop this charade of advancing yourself as an even-handed mediator and tell us up-front that you are in fact an advocate, for that way we would be able to deal with you in a fitting manner.
Fawaz Turki is a journalist, lecturer and author based in Washington. He is the author of The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile.
