UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations General Assembly on Friday backed a
Palestinian bid to become a full U.N. member by recognizing it as qualified to join
and recommending the U.N. Security Council “reconsider the matter favorably.”
The vote by the 193-member General Assembly was a global survey of support for
the Palestinian bid to become a full U.N. member – a move that would effectively
recognize a Palestinian state – after the United States vetoed it in the U.N. Security
Council last month.
The assembly adopted a resolution on Friday with 143 votes in favor and nine
against – including the U.S. and Israel – while 25 countries abstained. It does not
give the Palestinians full U.N. membership, but simply recognizes them as qualified
to join.
The General Assembly resolution “determines that the State of Palestine … should
therefore be admitted to membership” and it “recommends that the Security
Council reconsider the matter favorably.”
The Palestinian push for full U.N. membership comes seven months into a war
between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and as Israel is
expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank, which the U.N. considers to be
illegal.
“We want peace, we want freedom,” Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour
told the General Assembly before the vote. “A yes vote is a vote for Palestinian
existence, it is not against any state. … It is an investment in peace.”
“Voting yes is the right thing to do,” he said in remarks that drew applause.
Under the founding U.N. Charter, membership is open to “peace-loving states” that
accept the obligations in that document and are able and willing to carry them out.
“As long as so many of you are ‘Jew-hating,’ you don’t really care that the
Palestinians are not ‘peace-loving,'” said U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan, who spoke
after Mansour. He accused the Assembly of shredding the U.N. Charter – as he used
a small shredder to destroy a copy of the Charter while at the lectern.
“Shame on you,” Erdan said.
The ambassador said on Monday that, if the measure was approved, he expected the
U.S. to cut funding to the United Nations and its institutions, in accordance with
American law.
An application to become a full U.N. member first needs to be approved by the 15
-member Security Council and then the General Assembly. If the measure is again
voted on by the council it is likely to face the same fate: a U.S. veto. “The council
must respond to the will of the international community,” United Arab Emirates
U.N. Ambassador Mohamed Abushahab told the assembly before the vote.
The General Assembly resolution adopted on Friday does give the Palestinians
some additional rights and privileges from September 2024 – like a seat among the
U.N. members in the assembly hall – but they will not be granted a vote in the body.
The Palestinians are currently a non-member observer state, a de facto recognition
of statehood that was granted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2012.
US FUNDING
The Palestinian U.N. mission in New York said on Thursday – in a letter to U.N.
member states – that adoption of the resolution backing full U.N. membership
would be an investment in preserving the long-sought-for two-state solution.
It said it would “constitute a clear reaffirmation of support at this very critical
moment for the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the
right to their independent State.”
The mission is run by the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in
the West Bank. Hamas ousted the Palestinian Authority from power in Gaza in
2007. Hamas – which has a charter calling for Israel’s destruction – launched the
Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered Israel’s assault on Gaza.
The United Nations has long endorsed a vision of two states living side by side
within secure and recognized borders. Palestinians want a state in the West Bank,
east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, all territory captured by Israel in the 1967 war with
neighboring Arab states.
The U.S. mission to the United Nations said earlier this week: “It remains the U.S.
view that the path toward statehood for the Palestinian people is through direct
negotiations.”
Under U.S. law, Washington cannot fund any U.N. organization that grants full
membership to any group that does not have the “internationally recognized
attributes” of statehood. The United States cut funding in 2011 for the U.N. cultural
agency, UNESCO, after the Palestinians joined as a full member.
On Thursday, 25 U.S. Republican senators – more than half of the party’s members
in the chamber – introduced a bill to tighten those restrictions and cut off funding to
any entity giving rights and privileges to the Palestinians. The bill is unlikely to pass
the Senate, which is controlled by President Joe Biden’s Democrats.