Let’s run through the “no” list, made of up of Guatemala, Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, and Togo.
Three of the Pacific island states almost certainly would have been invited to the friendship party in any case. The Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau have historic relationships with the U.S. dating back to the period after World War II, when they were under formal American control. They are now sovereign countries, but they have kept up close ties with the U.S. under “Free Association” agreements with Washington. Those countries get U.S. aid and other benefits, and in exchange, they vote in near lock-step with Washington at the UN. Those agreements have been in place for decades and, for the most part, still have years to run. In other words, it would have been remarkable had any of those three countries not voted with the U.S.
Still, that underplays an important dynamic. Even though those three countries had a combined Jewish population of zero in 2013, Israel has courted them with development aid in exchange for UN votes. A spokesman for the Israeli development agency Mashav told Tablet that year, “the Pacific Islands are countries with great need, and development actions there have proven themselves to be effective in voting in the UN.”
Israel’s outreach includes the fourth Pacific state to vote “no,” Nauru, which doesn’t have the formal ties to the U.S. that its Pacific neighbors share. Nauru has only about 10,000 people and few natural resources. Its best strategic asset, arguably, is its seat at the UN. In U.S. terms, Nauru having the same UN vote as every other big country is like Wyoming having the same number of senators as California. That lets Nauru monetize its sovereignty by offering diplomacy in exchange for aid. It is one of a handful of countries that still recognizes Taiwan instead of China, a relationship that wins it badly-needed development aid. It hosts a detention camp for refugees that Australia would prefer stay outside its borders, also in exchange for aid. It recognized Russian-occupied territories in Eastern Europe as sovereign states, and gets Russian money. As of May, that put Nauru afoul of a new American law that forces the U.S. government to cut off aid to any country that recognizes those territories. Meanwhile, Israel is reaching out. Netanyahu hosted Nauru’s president in June, which is like hosting, not a senator from Wyoming, but the mayor of Cheyenne—a city that, incidentally, has six times the population of Nauru. A friendly relationship with Israel, in other words, is no surprise.
This is not to say that Israeli diplomacy has focused on these few countries specifically, but only that the pro-Israel UN votes represent unique successes for that diplomacy. Israel has offered similar aid to several African countries, some of whom abstained. It's also recently been solidifying ties with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies, none of which resulted in favorable votes at the UN.