Israel diplomatic harassment over the UNSC resolution

As expected, the US used its veto during the UN Security Council vote on whether Palestine should be given full UN membership. Twelve countries voted for the resolution and two – the UK and Switzerland – abstained. A US official who spoke to the Times of Israel opined that countries voting in favour did so because they knew there would be no consequences given the US veto. Decades of allowing Israel’s colonial expansion to deplete Palestine would prove the official right.

Even so, and despite the possible gimmick at the UNSC, Israel decided it would summon the ambassadors of six countries that voted in favour of full Palestinian membership in the UN. The targeted countries were France, Japan, South Korea, Malta, Slovenia and Ecuador. Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Oren Marmorstein, gave a detailed explanation on X of the purported logic behind the decision.

“The unambiguous message that will be delivered to the ambassadors: A political gesture to the Palestinians and a call to recognise a Palestinian state – six months after the October 7 massacre – is a prize for terrorism,” Marmorstein wrote. It is evident that, despite the web of impunity Israel surrounds itself with, and which the international community protects, the settler-colonial state remains ungrateful for being allowed to commit genocide so openly, so premeditatedly, without any consequences. If terror had a name, Israel qualifies for it.

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Marmorstein’s rhetoric on Twitter states that the “political gesture” rewards Hamas. Primarily, the resolution’s political significance veers towards Israel since, so far, there has been no tangible political gesture aimed at decolonisation. Therefore, the resolution was symbolic at most for Palestinians, and a waste of time, like always, since the UN is perpetually manipulated by an agenda that protects violators of international law. Additionally, had the resolution passed, Hamas would not have been better off. The Palestinian Authority is the body sending its representatives to the UN and its institutions and it has given ample proof of its loyalties lying with the international community’s impositions on Palestine. Had the vote passed, the PA would be playing its usual duplicitous role to maintain the illusion of negotiations, even as Palestinians in Gaza are facing Israel’s ongoing violence to annihilate them.

Let us not forget that the countries Israel is currently diplomatically harassing have recognised its colonial existence, therefore legitimising the atrocities of the Nakba. They have also prioritised Israel’s demands above all legitimate Palestinian political rights, and they continue to maintain the defunct status quo of the two-state paradigm. Full UN membership of Palestine is still a weak gesture in comparison to the complicity that allows Israel to exist, the Abraham Accords, the de facto annexation, the mass graves being unearthed in Gaza, the genocide that the international community is allowing to proceed, unhindered. Also, Israel has ensured there is barely any land left for a Palestinian state to be a viable reality, so what would the resolution have achieved, other than adding to the list of debacles throughout the decades that humiliate Palestinians with promises and reward Israel with military aid?

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