The Palestinian Foreign Minister had said that, God willing, the world body would do right by his people, or words to that effect, when the General Assembly came to vote on Donald Trump’s Jerusalem shuffle; despite American threats to browbeat member states to do its bidding. And with the UN casting ballots overwhelmingly in rejection of this unilateral move — it seems that God was indeed listening. The final count was 128 to 9. The few that sided with the US against the odds were Israel, naturally, as well as Central American states Guatemala and Honduras while Togo was the only African nation to do so. Canada and Mexico were among the 35 abstaining nations. Be that as it may, this doesn’t detract from the positive show of international support for the Palestinians. Indeed had the majority of members caved to US pressure and voted in favour of the resolution aiming to recognise Jerusalem as the official capital of the Israeli state — this would have afforded a win for terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda in terms of ideological recruitment. As for poor old Bibi, the actual outcome of the vote can’t have come as too much of a surprise to the Israeli Prime Minister given how he had been on a veritable charm offensive in the run-up to balloting; referring to the UN as a “house of lies”. Yet while this is a (non-binding) victory for the Palestinians — the biggest loser is not Israel but the US. For the latter has for far too long traded on its outdated image as an honest broker for peace. And now the American genie is well and truly out of the bottle. It is a process that began in the years following 9/11 but Donald Trump has well and truly smashed it and not in a good way. And if he does come good on his threat to cut aid to those nations who behaved ‘insubordinately’ to US diktats, it will only benefit rivals such as China; the nation that Washington has long wished to contain. Indeed, the unquiet American president’s decision to abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has already pushed several countries to join Xi Jinping’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative. And while the US ambassador to the UN has said that Washington will “remember this day” whereby it was “singled out for attack” — the Palestinians will forever recall how Trump Town tried to bury once and for all their fundamental right to statehood. * Published in Daily Times, December 23rd 2017.