US exit from UNESCO took Israel by surprise

Four senior Israeli and American officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was no coordination with Israel in the days before the decision was announced and that the Trump administration did not tell Israel beforehand.

The senior Israeli officials said that in recent months the possibility of the United States leaving the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization had come up in talks between Israeli and U.S. diplomats in New York and Paris. They said the issue was also brought up during the June visit to Israel of U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley. But the Israeli sources said that at no point did the Americans tell Israel a decision had been made to withdraw.

Despite the generally close relations between Israel and the administration of President Donald Trump, the affair exposed a grave lack of coordination between the two countries.

Senior officials in Jerusalem confirmed that Israel learned of U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s decision to quit UNESCO from a report posted on the website of Foreign Policy very late Wednesday night. In its wake, Israeli diplomats at the embassy in Washington, the UN and at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters asked their American counterparts for clarification. Only late Thursday morning was Israel told that in a few hours the State Department would announce the U.S. departure from UNESCO.

Senior U.S. officials confirmed that Washington was not proactive about informing Israel of its decision. “The deliberative process that led to the decision to withdraw was an internal U.S. government process and was not discussed with any non-USG entities prior to the secretary’s decision,” a senior official said, using an abbreviation for the U.S. government.


In fact, the State Department did not inform Israel even after Tillerson made the decision. The only official to whom Tillerson reported the decision was UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova. Only after the announcement was published in the media did the United States inform its allies, including Israel.



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