How are the UN and the USA involved in the Israel v Palestine conflict? What are they doing to help?

The UN and the US have had a vital role in the Israel-Palestine conflict since the beginning, though it is controversial whether they have made the situation better or worse. Some people blame the UN for creating the conflict in the first place, while others believe that UN support is what has kept the conflict from conflagration into a much larger and bloodier war.

The US government considers Israel a vital ally, and as a result supports them with huge amounts of foreign aid, much of it in the form of military equipment and technology. The US also frequently uses its veto power in the UN Security Council to veto UN resolutions that US officials perceive to be against Israel's interests.

The UN on the other hand is quite divided on the issue, probably because the UN consists of over 200 member nations whose people and governments often have wildly diverging opinions. Sometimes the UN passes resolutions that favor Israel, other times resolutions that favor Palestine, and still other times resolutions that seek compromise between both sides. When resolutions favor Israel they are almost always supported by the US (though sometimes vetoed by other countries), while resolutions that favor Palestine are almost always vetoed by the US.

The UN has passed only a handful of resolutions directly related to the conflict: In 1947 they endorsed the plan to partition Israel and Palestine. After the Six-Day War in 1967, they also passed a resolution requiring Israel to withdraw from occupied territories and establish a "just settlement"---but this was too vague to carry any real force. Similarly in 1978, the UN ordered Israel to withdraw from Lebanon. In 1990 the UN held a peace conference in the Middle East hoping to reconcile Israel and Palestine and prevent the rise of the Gulf War... which obviously they failed to do on both counts.

Because the US has such global military and economic hegemony, they are frequently called upon to negotiate peace treaties between Israel and Palestine, but Palestinians usually perceive them as adopting a pro-Israel bias, and not without reason, given how much aid the US gives to Israel. As political leaders have come and gone in each country, relations between the three nations have ranged from conciliatory to ambivalent to outright hostile. In good times the US has successfully negotiated a number of ceasefires and peace treaties between different Israeli and Palestinian factions, but they never seem to last in bad times.

Overall I think the US and the UN are genuinely trying to achieve peace, but aren't really sure how to do so, and are subject to their own interests and internal conflicts. There's so much bitterness and distrust between the two sides, and such a long history of violence, that achieving a lasting peace has remained out of reach.