The upcoming United Nations General Assembly may show whether those nations who have pledged to support a Palestinian state really mean business.

United Nations General Assembly sessions, held each September since 51 nations convened in a Methodist church hall in London in 1946, come and go and mostly go without event.

The General Assembly is set to begin its 80th session come 9 September and it is difficult to imagine this one will go off uneventfully. To put the point simply, Israel has murdered, starved and terrorised too many Palestinians for this year’s gathering at the Secretariat in Manhattan to conclude without some conclusions. It remains only what these conclusions will be.

Several weeks ago a group of 15 nations — among them prominent members of the Atlantic alliance — stated their intention to announce their formal declaration of Palestinian statehood at this year’s session. This sets up various of Israel’s most important supporters for what is likely to prove a messy confrontation with “the Jewish state” and naturally, the United States as Israel’s unfailing backer.

This is not guesswork. It is already evident these new recognitions will dominate the Assembly session. Since the 15 nations declared their intent to recognise Palestine as a legitimate state, the Israelis have announced plans to mount a major new operation in Gaza City.

On 25 August, the Zionist military staged one of those disgusting “double tap” attacks — strike, then strike again as rescue workers and journalists arrive — on a hospital in southern Gaza, killing 20 people and raising the death toll among journalists to 247. Less than a week later, Israel began the large-scale attack on Gaza City it had previously announced – an act of sheer defiance and impunity.

Never to be outdone when an opportunity for outrage arises, the State Department announced on Friday it would deny visas to all Palestinian officials who had planned to attend the General Assembly – this “for undermining the prospects for peace".

I used the term “disgusting” in the above paragraph. This also qualifies, given the US committed to allowing diplomats free access to diplomatic proceedings when it was agreed to locate the Secretariat on American soil.

There is now talk of  holding this year’s General Assembly in Geneva so that Palestinian representatives could attend. This will not happen, but the thought is a measure of the international mood.

I see only two likely outcomes as this storm gathers. In one, the better of the two, France, Britain and other pillars of the Western alliance will back their honourable diplomatic shifts with substantive action against the Zionists’ terror campaigns and rampant breaches of international law.

That would change the diplomatic landscape significantly. In the other, these nations will do nothing, decisively discrediting their position on the Israel-Palestine question while putting the UN’s impotence on pitiful display. There will be no coming back from this latter eventuality.

The question of power arises.

If you do not know the flaw in the UN Charter that effectively disempowers the General Assembly, you should: Executive authority lies in the Security Council, whose permanent members hold veto power. Only the Council can pass legally binding resolutions and determine measures to enforce them. Apart from quotidian matters to do with housekeeping — the UN’s budget and so on — the Assembly is limited to voting on non-binding resolutions.

OK, the Security Council is where the UN gets things done, or doesn’t, as is too often the case. You could argue that the General Assembly serves as a sort of suggestion box for what are now the UN’s 193 members, but this is to say nothing of note ever occurs in the Assembly and that is simply not the case.

I expect things of note this year. I cannot yet surmise whether these will prove things-of-note-honourable or things-of-note-disgraceful.

A little history, maybe, to help UN sceptics.

Fidel Castro, a year and nine months in power,  addressed the General Assembly in September 1960. The UN asks members to limit their time at the podium to 15 minutes; the fiery Fidel spoke for four hours, a non-stop rip into the history of US imperialism and its abuses of Cuba since the 1959 revolution.

The UN calls Castro’s speech “epic” and a “pivotal moment". These are........

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