The United Nations may be about to bestow a diplomatic gift on the Palestinian Authority — which supported Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre — by conferring on it the “rights and privileges” of member states in UN forums.
In other words, to make “Palestine” a UN member in all but name.
This would be a moral travesty of the kind that’s come to characterize Turtle Bay, and it could only happen with the Biden administration’s assent.
But there’s a silver lining: The action provides the legal basis for a president — a future President Donald Trump, say, — to finally end all US funding to the world body.
The PLO, the terror organization whose leader, Mahmoud Abbas, runs the Palestinian Authority, has long sought to establish international recognition of a “State of Palestine” to avoid having to negotiate with, and make any concessions to, Israel.
The goal is the create a diplomatic fait accompli — “facts in the air” to the complement the facts it attempts to create on the ground through terror and illegal construction.
The United Nations has always been the most fertile ground for the PA’s “internationalization” campaign, given longstanding, pathological UN bias against Israel.
That is why Congress passed two laws in the early 1990s that ban any funding to the United Nations or its affiliated agencies if they give the PA member-state status.
The United States is by far the UN’s biggest contributor, paying a third of the budget — a whopping $18 billion, not counting the massive value of its free Midtown real estate.
The least American taxpayers should get in return is preventing the UN’s thugs and dictators from handing the privileges of UN membership to a terrorist entity that doesn’t even meet the criteria for statehood.
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UNESCO, a UN agency, made the mistake of giving the Palestinians “member state” status in 2011; since then, the Palestinians have hijacked UNESCO’s agenda to pass resolutions denying the Jewish connection to biblical sites like Jerusalem, Jericho and Hebron.
President Barack Obama was forced to stop US funding to UNESCO because of the laws on the books.
Now the PA is aiming for a bigger prize: the privileges of membership in the UN’s principal body, the General Assembly, and in all its associated bodies and committees.
Yet under the UN charter, the Security Council must authorize any new UN member-states, and it vetoed the PA’s membership bid again just a few weeks ago.
Knowing it has automatic support from the undemocratic majority at the General Assembly, the PA has come up with an end-run: a resolution that gives it privileges on “an equal footing with Member States.”
Even this bureaucratic sleight-of-hand could trigger the US defunding statute. So this week the PA came up with a new draft: Instead of saying “the State of Palestine” will have the privileges of member states, it simply enumerates the privileges that go along with membership, and grants them all to the PA.
It’s a transparent attempt to paper over the practical effect of the resolution to avoid the loss of US funding.
Congress anticipated such tricks: The statutory defunding criteria specifically uses the words “same standing” as a member state, rather than actual membership, so giving the PA the general benefits of membership without calling it membership should be enough to end funding.
But if the resolution passes, it means the Biden administration has signaled that it will go along with the ruse and not move to defund, even though the law would allow it to.
It would mean Biden would rather help the PA win diplomatic battles, even as the Jewish state fights for its existence, than enforce US law.
The president set the stage for the move last year by persuading Congress to temporarily waive the UNESCO defunding, on condition that the PA stop trying to gain statehood status at the world body.
The PA took that as an invitation to push harder. At the very least, an affirmative vote this week will give Congress every reason to not renew the UNESCO waiver when it expires next year.
And if the PA’s new gambit succeeds, it gives any future president an extraordinary opportunity.
The United Nations is a corrupt, failed organization fundamentally tainted by its coddling dictatorships and chronic antisemitism, but broad efforts at defunding it have failed in Congress; now a future White House would have firm grounds to stop sending the checks.
Perhaps the UN apparatchiks are confident Biden will be reelected. But are they really willing to bet the farm for this vile terror regime?
Eugene Kontorovich is a professor at GMU Scalia Law School, and a scholar at the Kohelet Policy Forum.