Israel, US tight-lipped on Kerry’s curious TV plea for help on UNESCO vote
What did the secretary mean when he said he'd asked Netanyahu to 'waive' US law that cost administration its voting rights at UN body?
A week after US Secretary of State John Kerry bizarrely asked Israel to intervene to enable the United States to regain its voting rights in UNESCO, Israeli and American officials won’t say what the secretary meant by the plea or what they are going to do about it.
Kerry made the curious request during an interview with Israel’s Channel 10 TV aired on May 3.
Most of the interview was devoted to Kerry arguing in favor of the emerging deal on Iran’s nuclear program, which is vehemently opposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but which the secretary promised would guarantee that Iran could not attain nuclear weapons. Kerry also used the conversation, however, to highlight what he said were the Obama administration’s relentless efforts to defend Israel at the United Nations and other international forums.
“In fact, we’re even being kicked out of entities at the UN now because we stand up” for Israel, Kerry said, referring to a decades-old law that stipulates Washington stop funding UN bodies that accept the Palestinians as full members. As a result of this law, the US ceased paying its dues to UNESCO after the organization admitted Palestine as a member state in 2011. The US subsequently lost its right to vote in the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
“We will no longer, by the way, be able to defend Israel as a result of losing that vote,” Kerry said in the TV interview. “We’ve asked the prime minister and the government of Israel: Give us a waiver so that we can at least continue to be able to defend Israel [at UNESCO] because actually this winds up as being self-defeating.”
The US embassy in Tel Aviv declined to explain what Kerry meant by asking the Israeli government for a waiver.
The Prime Minister’s Office declined to comment on the issue. And a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said only that Israel and the US are “conducting a wide-ranging dialogue on diplomatic issues relating to international organizations,” and thanked the US for the “solid support” it provides to Israel in international forums, including UNESCO.
It is possible that Kerry misspoke, and actually intended to say that the State Department wants Congress to waive Public Law 101-246, from 1990, which bars Washington from funding the UN “or any specialized agency thereof which accords the Palestine Liberation Organization the same standing as member states.”
Or Kerry may have been suggesting the Israeli government should urge its powerful friends in Congress to repeal the law or take other steps to enable the State Department to resume funding and thus influencing UNESCO.
“Obviously Kerry meant that the Israelis should tell AIPAC to tell Congress to give them a waiver,” said one Israeli insider, insisting on anonymity. “This isn’t the first time that we’re hearing this kind of thing. It’s just the first time that a senior US official said it publicly.”
If so, added another source, such a request would indicate that some officials in the administration exaggerate the influence the pro-Israel lobby yields in Washington, the source added. “They forget that Congressmen don’t take orders from the Israeli government.”
There are actually two laws that require Washington to cut off contributions to UN bodies that grant the Palestinians membership as a state, one from 1990 and one from 1994. The US embassy in Tel Aviv confirmed that the administration is unhappy about the current legal situation.
“These laws were meant to deter the Palestinians from seeking membership as a state in UN specialized agencies, but as we have seen in UNESCO, they do not have that effect,” a US embassy spokesperson told The Times of Israel. “Rather, they allow others to determine where to reduce United States influence in the UN system, and in doing so make it much more difficult for the US to pursue our national interests.”
In any case, Israel is not about to reach out to friends in Congress and urge them to waive the contentious law, several sources familiar with the issue assessed.
After Israel’s government is sworn in and Israeli-American discussions resume on the Iranian nuclear program and Palestinian moves at the UN Security Council, the issue might came up again, one source said. “It will be one card in the overall game of give-and-take that will be brought into the mix when it comes to Iran and the Security Council.”