The UNESCO Vote and Palestinian Statehood in the Security Council

by Steven I. Weiss

Yesterday’s vote at the U.N.’s cultural organization to recognize Palestine as a state was extremely lopsided, but what does it mean for the much smaller group of the U.N. Security Council, and what does it say about Israel’s and the United States’ standing among leading nations.

We’ve tallied the results here at TJC.

If the Security Council members vote the same way they did in yesterday’s UNESCO vote, there will be a majority of 9 members voting for a Palestinian state, which would force the U.S. to have to veto the resolution to keep it from passing, and thus bring on all manner of repercussions against the U.S., such as this. Here’s how the 15 member nations voted yesterday at UNESCO:

	For	Abstain	Against
China	X
France	X
Russia	X
United Kingdom		X
United States			X
Bosnia/Herzegovenia		X
Brazil	X
Colombia		X
Gabon	X
Germany			X
India			X
Lebanon	X
Niger	X
Portugal		X
South Africa	X
Totals	9	4	2

The first five countries listed there are the permanent members of the Security Council, any of which can choose to veto a resolution supported by the majority. Not only is the U.S. the only one of those five that has promised to veto, it’s the only one willing to vote against.

How this vote sets up the Security Council’s actual vote is obviously unclear: on the one hand, some countries could feel that the lower stakes at UNESCO free them up to do something symbolic in support of the Palestinian State to counterbalance a vote against it at the Security Council; on the other hand, some countries could feel that the lower stakes would make it easier to vote against, and so we’d actually see some no/abstain votes turn into yes votes at the Security Council. Either way, it’s a tally that adds a lot more perspective to the general 107-14 vote at UNESCO, with 52 abstentions.

How about the relative isolation of the U.S. and Israel here? A 107-14 vote sure sounds like global opinion is swaying very heavily against them, but as we saw with Security Council members, the vote looks a bit different when you put it into certain smaller groupings. To get a sense of European opinion, we tallied up the results for the European Union, too. Here they are:

	For	Abstain	Against
Austria	X
Belgium	X
Bulgaria		X
Cyprus	X
Czech Republic			X
Denmark		X
Estonia		X
Finland	X
France	X
Germany			1
Greece	X
Hungary		X
Ireland	X
Italy		X
Latvia		X
Lithuania			X
Luxembourg	X
Malta	X
Netherlands	X		1
Poland		X
Porutgal		X
Romania		X
Slovakia		X
Slovenia	X
Spain	X
Sweden			X
United Kingdom		X
Totals	11	11	5

And what about for NATO? Membership in the EU and NATO are close to identical, and the results are nearly so: 11 each of yeses and abstentions for NATO, with 7 voting against (the two NATO members against who are not in the EU are Canada and the United States; the one EU vote against that is not a NATO member is Sweden).

As to other international groupings: the Arab League voted unanimously for the Palestinian state, with the exceptions of an absent Comoros and a Palestinian Authority that until yesterday only had observer status.

The G8 goes 3-3, with 2 abstentions, with the only vote not mentioned above being Japan’s yes vote. Canada, Germany and the U.S. are on one side there, while France, Japan and Russia are on the other side, with the UK and Italy abstaining.