Countries backing US' Jerusalem move under US shadow

Following the recent much-criticized U.S. decision on the status of Jerusalem, a UN resolution against the move was overwhelmingly approved, with only a handful of small countries voting with the U.S.

The UN General Assembly last week voted 128-9 to reject U.S. President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Besides Israel and the U.S., the UN members which rejected the motion were Guatemala, Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, and Togo.

Guatemala even announced on Monday that, like the U.S., it plans to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

All these countries have close trade ties with the U.S., which provides investment in such Central American countries as Guatemala and Honduras.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the US-based United Fruit Company dominated the banana business and also had enormous political power in these two countries.

United Fruit even played a role encouraging the 1954 military coup in Guatemala at the hands of the CIA, the U.S. spy agency.

Once dominated by foreign-owned banana companies, the countries are still major fruit exporters, but suffer from both unstable politics and periodic U.S. intervention.

Due to their dependence on Washington and lack of political and economic freedom, they are sometimes referred to disparagingly as "banana republics" -- a term coined by American author O. Henry more than a century ago to mean politically unstable countries whose economies depend heavily on fruit exports, tourism, and foreign investors.

Today, the U.S. still has influence on those countries through banana companies. It also has a military base in Honduras.