Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas delivers a speech during a parliamentary session at the Greek parliament, which approved a resolution calling on the government to recognise the State of Palestine, in Athens on December 22, 2015. It’s high time for the two powers (the US and UK) that have done the most to wreck the Middle East to support the true path to peace, the writers say.– Picture: Louisa Gouliamaki / AFP

By Jeffrey D Sachs and Sybil Fares

This week, the US and UK have the chance to correct decades of their blatant geopolitical errors in the Israel-Palestine conflict by welcoming Palestine as the 194th United Nations member state. More than any other countries, the US and UK have wrecked the Middle East through their non-stop meddling and imperial arrogance. This week they have the chance to make some amends.

A total of 139 countries already recognise the State of Palestine, more than two-thirds of the UN member states. Several European states will soon join the list. Yet the US has so far blocked Palestine’s membership in the UN, with the UK always sticking close to the US lead. Both have relentlessly backed Israel’s apartheid rule over Palestine and are currently actively backing Israel in its horrific destruction of Gaza.

This week, most likely on Friday, the UN Security Council will vote in favour of UN membership for Palestine — if the US and UK don’t block it yet again with their veto. Back in 2011, Palestine had the support of the UN Security Council for membership, except that the US forced the Palestinians to accept “observer” status instead, promising that full membership would soon follow, yet another US deception.

Despite Israel’s relentless provocations, routine killing of Palestinians (known colloquially as “mowing the grass”), repeated violations of the UN Security Council, and now the slaughter in Gaza, the US and UK have remained steadfast in backing Israel and opposing Palestine as if nothing at all is amiss.

No countries in the world have done more to wreck the Middle East than the UK and US The lead role certainly goes to Britain, whose imperial machinations in the region date back to the 19th century and continue until today. Britain kept Egypt under its thumb for decades, from the 1880s to the 1950s.

It deceitfully promised overlapping parts of the Ottoman Middle East three times over during World War I: to the French (in the Sykes-Picot Agreement), to the Arabs (in the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence), and to the Zionists (in the Balfour Declaration), purporting to allocate what was not theirs in the first place.

After World War I, Britain took Palestine for itself under a so-called mandate of the newly created League of Nations, while France grabbed a mandate over Lebanon and Syria. Britain left Palestine in a shambles in 1947 but continued its relentless meddling by teaming up with France and Israel to invade Egypt in 1956. Britain’s meddling has also contributed to destruction and disarray in Yemen, Iraq, and many more parts of the Middle East.

After World War II, the US picked up where Britain left off, first joining Britain in the MI6-CIA overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, and then going on to a long career of CIA-led regime-change operations including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya, among others.

Throughout the entire postwar period, the US has been the lead dishonest broker between Israel and Palestine, for example calling for the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 but then boycotting and trying to overthrow Hamas when it won those elections. In 2011, when Palestine applied for UN membership, and won the support of the UN Security Council membership committee, the US leaned on Palestine to wait and to accept observer status instead, promising that full membership would soon follow. This was yet another lie.

Despite numerous UN Security Council resolutions over the years calling for a two-state solution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Israeli governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu have blatantly rejected an independent State of Palestine.

The current Netanyahu cabinet includes right-wing extremists such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir who openly call for ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and Gaza to create a Greater Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Yet despite Israel’s relentless provocations, routine killing of Palestinians (known colloquially as “mowing the grass”), repeated violations of the UN Security Council, and now the slaughter in Gaza, the US and UK have remained steadfast in backing Israel and opposing Palestine as if nothing at all is amiss.

The question is whether the US and UK have any sense and any shame at this point. They may think they are supporting Israel by blocking Palestine’s UN membership, but the fact is that Israel is more isolated and endangered than ever because of the Israeli government’s extremism, its shocking violence against the Palestinian people, and its apartheid rule.

Since the start of the war last fall, 33,000 Palestinians are officially counted as dead, yet the actual death toll is vastly higher, with tens of thousands more still buried under the rubble or dead from extreme deprivations of food, water, and healthcare.

Alas, in recent days, the double standards and falsehoods of the US and UK have been on full display. The US and UK adamantly refused to condemn Israel’s brazenly illegal bombing of Iran’s diplomatic compound in Damascus, Syria, on April 1, but then heatedly condemned Iran when it counter-attacked two weeks later. This absurd double-standard makes the US and UK look like crass bullies in the eyes of the rest of the world.

After more than a century of UK and US meddling in the Middle East, it’s time to be honest about the facts and the solutions. Most importantly, welcoming Palestine as UN member state and implementing the two-state solution according to international law is the path to peace, justice, and security for both Israel and Palestine.

Most of the world enthusiastically back this solution. It’s just a question of whether the UK and US will veto it. It’s high time for the two powers that have done the most to wreck the Middle East to support the true path to peace by welcoming Palestine as a sovereign UN member state now, not in some fabled future that is forever blocked by Israeli hardliners.

Prof Jeffrey D Sachs is Director of the Centre for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sybil Fares is a specialist and advisor in Middle East policy and sustainable development at SDSN

This article was published on Common Dreams