The decision by the United States to withhold $60 million of funding to UNESCO in response to the organization granting Palestine full membership is at once knee jerk and deliberately timed.
In the sense that it will harm many unrelated UNESCO projects, it is a childish and shortsighted riposte to an action that only the U.S. and 13 other states – one of them Israel – even saw as a misdemeanor. In the sense that it now nixes any hope of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis for the foreseeable future, it is typical of U.S. dalliance on the issue.
As former Secretary of State James Baker pointed out Wednesday, whenever there is a presidential race in Washington, the U.S.’s Middle East policies go out the window. With all contenders eager to curry favor with the pro-Israeli lobby, there is no chance that any significant progress will be reached in the next 12 months.
Given that U.S. President Barak Obama expressed his hope in 2010 that negotiations would produce a two-state solution within the year, elections are coming at an inconvenient time. But elections happen in America every four years. They are dependable mileposts against which progress can be gauged. The problem comes when any perceivable progress is wiped out by two individuals clawing for the White House.
The head of UNESCO has declared that the U.S. decision to withdraw what constitutes 22 percent of the organization’s annual funding will compromise projects as diverse and vital as Holocaust education and tsunami early warning systems. The U.S.’s proclivity toward defending Israel’s interests is going to have global fallout. What would happen, for example, if the WHO decided to recognize the state of Palestine? Would the U.S. still make a statement by withdrawing its support?
Aside from the potential damage caused to the cultural and scientific work UNESCO conducts across the globe, the decision to withdraw funding will most hurt the U.S.’s regional credibility.
Extremists and skeptics alike are declaring that the U.S. simply cannot be trusted as an independent mediator in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Judging America on its latest act of pettiness, it is hard to disagree.
Israel’s announcement that it plans to accelerate its settlement building and halt funding to the Palestinian Authority also damages any chance of a speedy resolution. By the time the next U.S. president gets round to encouraging negotiations between the two players, Israel will have further expanded illegally into Palestinian territory and unbalanced the scales of peace talks.
It used to be said that when the U.S. sneezed, the rest of the world caught a cold. While that may be true in terms of UNESCO support, once again, it is the Palestinians who are set to suffer from America’s allergy.
Front Page Features