The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, a few days ago, ve­toed yet an­oth­er bid at the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil by the Pales­tin­ian Au­thor­i­ty, the ef­fec­tive gov­ern­ment of Pales­tine, to be­come a full mem­ber-state of the world of na­tions' body; es­sen­tial­ly say­ing that such an ac­ces­sion should be de­pen­dent on Is­rael’s say so.

The con­tin­u­ing bias of the USA in favour of Is­rael and against Pales­tine and its peo­ple re­flects what Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has said and demon­strat­ed to be Amer­i­ca’s un­wa­ver­ing sup­port for Is­rael. That kind of en­gage­ment by the USA should be con­tex­tu­alised in the re­al­i­ty of Is­rael hav­ing cap­tured and killed thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans, dri­ven even more off their lands and oc­cu­pied in­creas­ing por­tions of Pales­tine over a 75-year-plus pe­ri­od and with brute force.

It should al­so be not­ed that US Pres­i­dent Har­ry Tru­man recog­nised Is­rael’s de­c­la­ra­tion of it­self as a state in 1947 and wel­comed the Jew­ish na­tion to the UN body two years af­ter it had run over Pales­tine.

The US de­ci­sion to ve­to Pales­tine’s bid for full UN mem­ber­ship came against the sup­port of 12 of the 15-mem­bers of the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, who vot­ed for Pales­tine’s ac­cep­tance while Britain and Switzer­land ab­stained.

In its re­fusal to agree to the Pales­tin­ian at­tempt to gain full UN sta­tus, the USA am­bas­sadors es­sen­tial­ly ar­gued about the con­flict which they con­tend ex­ists with­in Pales­tine be­tween the Pales­tin­ian Au­thor­i­ty and Hamas, the lat­ter’s re­cent ag­gres­sion against Is­rael and what they con­sid­er to be Pales­tine’s gen­er­al state of un­ac­cep­tance for full mem­ber­ship.

On the is­sue of con­flict be­tween groups with­in Pales­tine over gov­er­nance and au­thor­i­ty, there are very few coun­tries in the world, the USA in­clud­ed, where such con­flict does not ex­ist. Re­gard­ing the claimed vi­o­lence of Hamas, the USA has of­ten ar­gued, when it suits such a po­si­tion, that Hamas is sep­a­rate from the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple. At the same time, the US is ig­nor­ing the over­pow­er­ing Is­raeli vi­o­lence which has killed over 34,000 Pales­tin­ian civil­ians, com­pared to what it con­sid­ers to ter­ror­ism prac­ticed by Hamas.

Pales­tine’s de­nial of state­hood and recog­ni­tion at the Unit­ed Na­tions goes back to 2011, when the Mah­moud Ab­bas Pales­tin­ian Au­thor­i­ty gov­erned Pales­tine with as much co­he­sion as any oth­er state in the world fac­ing sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances.

The con­tin­u­ing de­nial of the right of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple to be ful­ly rep­re­sent­ed at the world body must sure­ly have left them even more open to the long, in­dis­crim­i­nate bul­ly­ing and un­mit­i­gat­ed vi­o­lence of Is­rael.

Back home, there is en­cour­ag­ing news from Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Brown, that this coun­try will soon make a de­ci­sion on the is­sue of Pales­tine’s as­cen­sion to full mem­ber­ship of the UN. The hope must sure­ly be that T&T will join its Cari­com part­ners, Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos and Guyana, who have al­ready recog­nised Pales­tine’s right to full UN mem­ber­ship.

World­wide, 140 coun­tries, an over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of the 193 UN mem­ber states, have recog­nised Pales­tine as a state and sup­port­ed it to be­come a full mem­ber of the UN body.

The easy ve­to by the US in such mat­ters heav­i­ly skews the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil in favour of the Eu­ro­pean and Amer­i­can bias. Once again, the of­ten-made call for a re­struc­tur­ing of the UN sys­tem has rel­e­vance.