America stopped funding the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization four years ago, after it voted to admit Palestine as a member.
Senior Israeli and American officials said that Netanyahu's change in policy, made at the behest of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, will likely persuade Israel's friends in Congress to include renewed funding for UNESCO in the next foreign aid budget.
An old law enacted by Congress requires America to stop funding any UN agency that accepts the Palestinians as a full member state. Thus UNESCO's vote to admit Palestine in October 2011 automatically triggered a funding cut-off...
For several months now, senior administration officials have been trying to persuade their Israeli counterparts to stop opposing a resumption of funding, but the Foreign Ministry refused to compromise on the matter until recently.
A senior Israeli official said that Aharon Leshno-Yaar, head of the ministry's division for the UN and international organizations, took an extremely hard line on the issue, arguing that any Israeli compromise would breathe new life into unilateral Palestinian measures against Israel at the United Nations. If Israel acquiesced to a resumption of American funding for UNESCO, Leshno-Yaar warned, both the Palestinians and UN agencies would take it to mean that such unilateral moves have no long-term consequences...
During a UNESCO conference in Paris in October, Kerry tried to persuade various countries to back America's bid for election to the agency's executive board. He also used the visit to ask Israel's ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama-Hacohen, to inform Jerusalem that Washington wanted it to drop its opposition to renewed American funding for the agency and to make its lack of opposition clear to both its friends in Congress and the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC...
It is a major policy change for Israel, which until now has vehemently opposed the idea."
