Tabnak – Against the backdrop of US administration’s repeated threats against the nations objecting its position on Jerusalem/al-Quds, the United Nations General Assembly decisively voted against Washington. The move could be regarded as a new defeat for Trump’s unilateral foreign policy approach.
According to The New York Times, a majority of the world’s nations delivered a stinging rebuke to the United States on Thursday, denouncing its decision to recognize Jerusalem/al-Quds as Israel’s capital and ignoring President Trump’s threats to retaliate by cutting aid to countries voting against it.
In a collective act of defiance toward Washington, the General Assembly voted 128 to 9, with 35 abstentions, to demand that the United States rescind its Dec. 6 declaration on Jerusalem/al-Quds.
The resolution is nonbinding and therefore largely symbolic, but the lopsided vote indicated the extent to which the Trump administration’s decision to defy a 50-year international consensus on Jerusalem’s status has unsettled world politics and contributed to America’s diplomatic isolation.
In fact, some of the United States’ closest allies moved to condemn Trump’s decision. The United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan, among others, voted in favor of the resolution. Other allies, like Canada, Mexico and Australia, abstained.
According to The Hill, in the run-up to the General Assembly vote, Trump and US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley sought to warn countries against opposing the Trump administration's Jerusalem decision.
“The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out in this assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation,” Haley said ahead of the vote. “We will remember it when, once again, we are called up to make the world’s largest contribution to the UN, and we will remember it when many countries come calling on us to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.”
Haley sent a letter to members of the international body this week, warning that Trump had instructed her to take stock of the countries that voted in favor of the resolution. The president followed up on that warning on Wednesday, suggesting at a Cabinet meeting that the US could cut off foreign aid for countries that opposed the US in the vote.
It should be noted that The UN Security Council sought earlier this week to vote on a measure that would have demanded that states refrain from placing their diplomatic missions in Jerusalem. Without naming the US or Trump, the resolution nevertheless would have proclaimed Trump's decision null and void. Every country on the council, including US allies, voted for the measure Monday — but the US, which holds veto power, blocked the vote.
Carrying out a promise to his base of supporters, Trump’s decision on Jerusalem upended decades of American policy, aggravating an emotional issue that has festered since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, when the Israelis occupied the entire city.
Many Security Council resolutions since then, which have the force of international law, have warned that Jerusalem’s status is unresolved, that claims of sovereignty by Israel are invalid and that the issue must be settled in negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.
