I'm of the opinion (echoing analysis I've seen recently but can't remember who said it, sorry) that a veto in this particular case is actually worse than abstaining because
- playing field for diplomacy is and must be states as the entities - if you go with smaller factions organized in forms that aren't recognizable as such to an international body, we get into shit and muddied fields such as enemies making deals diplomacy etc with separatist groups. Palestinian resistance groups are many and not exactly cohesive as acting as one state-resembling unit and while the 2024 Beijing Declaration had got many of them together, right now most of the international body still sees the Palestinian Authority, which we know are collaborationist with the Zionist entity, as the defacto representative of Palestine. Sticking with the principle of doing diplomacy with states as the actor-entities, aligns with China's steadfast and consistent call for the Two-State solution. This is a thing that has been unpopular since Day 0 with the pro-Palestine crowd in the western left (who I think see the word "solution" and think that would be the end of it and that Palestine would mire in perpetual genocidal relation with its neighbor like Armenia-Azerbaijan, rather than statehood being a very powerful tool!), something I think is quite relevant to this whole shebang. All that as a preface to say, the responsibility and burden to free Palestine should ALSO rest with their neighbors, their cultural brethren-Arab nations. It would be paternalistic/patronizing and against the spirit of respecting other nations' sovereignty (foundational to anti-imperialism) - which would include what happens in ones' neighborhood - to VETO when other Arab states in MENA have voted FOR this plan - HI ALGERIA!!! If more MENA states would have shown up for AGAINST then China and Russia would have more reason to back that consensus and VETO. And in everything but especially in the arena of diplomacy, China (and Russia) cannot simply decide they represent the will of anyone other than themselves including MENA, including Arab nations, including Palestinians. IDK maybe I'm stupid but I think principles with very good reasons should be upheld AND it's not a betrayal because literally the UN/UNSC isn't the only playing field omg because...
- ...obviously China and Russia have more material and meaningful ways to support Palestine outside of the UN/UNSC
- even if the proposal clearly penned by the US that 'passed' is vague and only reports infrequently (iirc it calls for yearly stats reported to the UN/UNSC/appropriate division i think its just called BoP), that's still better than them going ahead with their nefarious plans completely behind closed doors in the dark.
since Electric Antifada was mentioned earlier... ok so I'm not super familiar with them and I'm not pointing fingers at them specifically, just English-language news media overall, but - maybe a bit conspiracy theory-brained of me, but - I'm questioning where this wave is coming from. China and Russia have been nothing but consistent, and really this is nothing unusual, especially to people who have been actually paying attention and ability to remember milestone events.
the tumblrinas I've seen buoy the "China and Russia are traitors" thing have been, yes, the usual suspects (anticommunist leftists/people with "tankie" as a pejorative in their vocab, tho lately they've been nitpicking since I guess they now identify as 'tankie' and been using "chinese/russian nationalists" as their pejorative, and just straight-up leftcoms) but among them are people who I distinctly recall espousing afro-pessimism* and calling other tumblr users from the periphery (particularly latam) "antiblack" for using the word "usamerican" (to distinguish US americans from other people who live in both continents) -- and for a long time I've suspected these people to be plants at worst but more likely convenient stooges to vector anticommunism and disunity - against budding communists in the imperial core to make connections with those either more seasoned or from the periphery. UGH, name-calling is just such an easy way to shut down peoples' brains and stop them from turning on analysis functions and critical thinking or even just looking for sources.
*uh oh I'm feeling ranty again... alright. you've been warned. afropessimism. whenever and wherever I bump into it, it makes me feel like im going insane, like these people will go onto xiaohongshu and tell chinese people they're all racist against black people because they think chinese people are basically white which automatically makes them antiblack, ,, antiblackness is king, it's above all and it's immutable, but also it's incomparable to racism that nonblack people experience and because they could never intimately understand or experience real true racism at the heart of this world which is antiblackness. please, tell me more about how oppressed peoples of the world could never understand each other and should be forever divided, until maybe some world savior perhaps of the black variety instead of white comes to liberate us all. did i ever mention that afropessimists hate marxism for some reason, hm, maybe that's by design!! maybe, just maybe someone doesn't want a Black Panther Party 2.0, reading ML literature and all, to come back in the heartland of imperialism (edit for moderation: black struggles are real and hard! and yes I can't say I fully understand because I don't live it but it doesn't mean I or any other nonblack folk can't try to understand, including understanding enough to make a difference, and nor is it the struggle that has primacy over all others)