It is to the credit of T&T and most countries in the Caribbean that they defied the omniscient United States and supported United Nations' non-member observer status for Palestine. In the end, 138 UN member states favoured the Palestinian petition; nine nations voted against and 41 abstained.
Among regional countries, affirmative votes were registered by Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Cuba, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, T&T and Venezuela; abstaining were the Bahamas, Barbados and Haiti.
T&T's vote was particularly noteworthy as we had last year abstained from the Palestinian push for full membership in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco). That resolution was passed 107 to 14 with 52 abstentions.
Last week's Palestinian victory was largely symbolic. As Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas announced "Now we have become a state!" to cheering thousands in the courtyard of his headquarters in the West Bank last Sunday, the Associated Press observed that "an airplane flying high above the compound served as a reminder that the Palestinians have no airport, and they depend on Israeli ports for access to the high seas for shipping.
The traffic was as clogged as usual around the Israeli-controlled Qalandia checkpoint, which largely seals off Ramallah from Jerusalem, the eastern part of which has now been widely endorsed as the future Palestinian capital."
The vote, however, demonstrated the diplomatic isolation of the US in its uncompromising support of Israel, and was a vote as much for the Palestinians as it was against Israel. Early in Barack Obama's first presidential term he spoke strongly against Israeli settlements and coaxed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to partially freeze construction. When that partial freeze expired, no more was heard from Obama.
This year too, when Obama proposed that peace negotiations be revived based on 1967 borders, Netanyahu flew to Washington and lectured Obama in the White House on how wrong it was to even start thinking in this direction. Obama again dropped the matter. Yet the US continued its aggressive diplomatic push to have its allies vote against last week's Palestinian petition.
There was hectic US campaigning before the vote and a threat by a bipartisan US Senate group to cut off US contributions to the UN and aid to Palestine. Following the vote, the US reaction sought to diminish the overwhelming vote; its representative at the UN, Susan Rice, announced, "Today's grand pronouncements will soon fade and the Palestinian people will wake up tomorrow and find that little about their lives has changed, save that the prospects of a durable peace have only receded." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton added that the vote was "unfortunate and unproductive."
Ultimately, only nine countries voted in line with the US; traditional allies in Europe, Japan, and Australia either voted for the petition or abstained, prompting one Israeli official to declare, "We have lost Europe." The US supporters make for an almost laughable list: Canada, Czech Republic, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Panama. Israel, for its part, has been so aggressive in its policy and actions towards Palestinians that over the years it has generated more sympathy for the Palestinians.
Gaza has been besieged, blockaded and imprisoned. Despite the views of most of the world's peoples and governments, Israel responded to the vote by announcing the construction of new homes for Jewish settlers in the disputed West Bank. That not enough, Israel then announced it would withhold US$118 million in tax revenues collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.
"I don't intend to transfer funds this month," said Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz to his Cabinet last Sunday. "The money will be used to deduct debts the PA owes to the Israel Electric Corporation and other bodies."
"The Palestinians were warned that there were measures that could be taken if they went forward with this unilateral step at the UN. We are now following through on that word," added one senior Israeli government official. "There are more measures that can be taken if the Palestinians continue to take unwise steps at the UN."
The Caribbean region is important in the UN. We are small nations but each is independent and has a vote so this small place, including Cuba and Haiti, controls 16 votes at the UN. It is noteworthy that most countries in the world engaged in some level of national discussion in the lead-up to the vote on the Palestinian petition.
A survey of newspapers shows that many countries paid attention, were engaging in newspaper commentaries, letters to the editor and social media conversations.
Here, however, we did not even know how we were going to vote. Last year, for the Unesco vote, former Foreign Affairs Minister Suruj Rambachan could not even be reached for many days following the vote. This time around, the media had to contact our mission to find out that we favoured the Palestinians.
There is no reason to hide these things. The Government, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, should have been leading a national discussion prior to both votes. If that were done, if the population were engaged, we would have all experienced a feel-good moment that we braved the diplomatic storm and stood firmly on the side of right.
As it is, our historic vote at the UN is a five-line newspaper story and we have been robbed of one of the few, much-needed reasons to feel good.