"The U.S. will face a difficult decision if the Palestinians should succeed in establishing a workaround toward official recognition, which could trigger America pulling all funding from the U.N. in protest, according to experts.
‘If the draft resolution as it currently stands is adopted, U.S. law demands that the U.S. withhold all funds from the U.N.,’ Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro University Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and president of Human Rights Voices, told Fox News Digital. ‘The question is: Where is Congress? It needs to make it very clear, very publicly, that American law will be upheld and take immediate steps to do so.’
The U.S. in 1990 passed Public Law 101-246, which focused on authorizing appropriations for fiscal 1990 and 1991 for the Department of State. Section 414 of the bill highlighted concerns over the inclusion of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the United Nations and specialized agencies.
The section states, ‘No funds authorized to be appropriated from this act or any other Act shall be available for the United Nations or any specialized agency thereof which accords the Palestine Liberation Organization the same standing as member states.’
The broad language – ‘any other Act’ – has created some confusion about what the U.S. would need to do if the PLO, a group internationally recognized as the official representative of the Palestinian people, were to obtain the privileges and powers of a full and recognized U.N. member.
‘It is no surprise that Biden officials are not hitting the airwaves clearly announcing that a General Assembly end run around the U.N. charter, purporting to grant the so-called state of Palestine the trappings of full-member state status, is not only contrary to the spirit and intent of the U.N.'s own charter but is contrary to American law,’ Bayefsky said.
‘A majority of U.N. member states are not free democracies,’ she said. ‘The Islamic and Arab blocs of states, a large percentage of which continue to dispute even Israel's right to exist, wield enormous power, and despite American isolation in U.N. circles on issue after issue of importance to the United States, including the constant aggression and antisemitism meted out to Israel, American citizens still bankroll the place and host the institution in its midst.’
The U.S. likely did not think it would have to wrangle with this problem, especially as American representatives at the U.N. continue to veto measures to recognize the Palestinians as a full member of the organization.
However, a new draft resolution would seek what some have called a ‘workaround’ that would seek the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to approve powers to vote without official recognition as a full member of the organization.
‘They're still carelessly killing Americans and killing Israelis through terrorism, and then giving those who do it … payments and a guaranteed position in the [Palestinian Liberation Army] when they get out of prison,’ Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., told Fox News Digital in reference to the Palestinian Authority. ‘That's [one] of the ugliest, most anti-democracy and anti-human rights policies I've ever heard of.’
‘Pay-to-slay is exactly what happened with Hamas just recently; obviously it's been an ongoing problem with Oct. 7, [and] they're part of the Palestinian effort,’ Smith said, calling the approach an ‘impermissible act’ and asking ‘how do you reward’ an organization like Hamas that ‘calls for the evisceration of Israel.’..."