The Palestinian Authority is planning to demand full recognition for “State of Palestine” at the United Nations and has been in contact with President Joe Biden about the matter, Palestinian media reported ahead of the General Assembly in September.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas is leading a sweeping lobbying effort along with the Palestinian envoy to the U.N., Riyad Mansour. The “political and diplomatic processes” are being conducted with heads of state including Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, King of Jordan Abdullah II, and members of the Security Council, the official PA WAFA news agency reported according to a translation by watchdog group, Palestinian Media Watch.
According to the report, the Palestinian envoy outlined the PA’s demands in a speech during the Security Council’s open meeting, and those demands are not being “examined by the council’s members.”
leadership is conducting extensive lobbying to achieve full UN recognition for the “State of Palestine.”
Recognition of a “State of Palestine”, if awarded, would contravene international law.
U.S. President Joe Biden (R) is received by Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas (C) during a welcome ceremony at the Palestinian Muqataa Presidential Compound in the city of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank on July 15, 2022. (AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images)
A week later, the PA official Al-Hayat Al-Jadida daily said Mansour had met with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who had welcomed the move and promised his assistance.
“The secretary-general welcomed this initiative and promised that he would help vis-à-vis the relevant parties. He expressed a desire to meet with President Abbas during the session of the UN General Assembly,” the report said.
Hosting a delegation from the U.S. Congress, PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh, who hosted a delegation of Congresspeople, called on them to support the recognition of the “State of Palestine.”
“If the current American administration believes in the two-state solution in the 1967 borders, the most beneficial thing is for it to recognize the State of Palestine and vote in favor of recognizing us as a state with full membership in the UN,” Al-Hayat Al-Jadida cited Shtayyeh as telling the delegation.
As PMW notes, in his speech at last year’s U.N. General Assembly, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas demonstrated just why he is no partner for peace.
In a long-winded rant, Abbas lamented the “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation; Rewrote history claiming that the Palestinians had never been presented with “a genuine and serious initiative to achieve peace”; Demanded that Israel agree to suicide as a Jewish state with the influx of millions of so-called “Palestinian refugees”; Whitewashed the PA’s continuous breaches of the Oslo Peace Accords including its terror promotion and terror rewards; Reiterated that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is the “legitimate and sole representative of the Palestinian people”, even though the majority of Palestinians no longer see the PLO as such.
Abbas also delivered an ultimatum to Israel, saying it had one year to capitulate to his demands or suffer the consequences:
To ensure our initiative is not open-ended, we must state that Israel, the occupying Power, has one year to withdraw from the Palestinian territory it occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem, and we are ready to work throughout this year on the delineation of borders and solving all final status issues under the auspices of the international Quartet and in accordance with United Nations resolutions. If this is not achieved, why maintain recognition of Israel based on the 1967 borders? Why maintain this recognition?
Of course, his remarks were little more than sabre rattling and Abbas has done none of what he threatened.
File/Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat (L) welcomes U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden before a meeting with Palestinian president in the West Bank city of Ramallah on March 9, 2016. (ABBAS MOMANI/AFP via Getty Images)
File/ U.S. Vice President Joe Biden reviews a guard of honour alongside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (R) prior to their meeting on March 10, 2010 in Ramallah, West Bank. (Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)
In 2012, the “State of Palestine” was granted symbolic U.N. non-member observer state status, joining only Vatican City in holding that unique status. Those efforts were led by terror-mom Latifa Abu Hmeid, whose five sons are serving life sentences for the murder of Israelis and a sixth son who was killed in an attempted arrest, after he too murdered an Israeli.
According to the U.N. Charter, the U.N. can only admit a new state if nine (including all of the 5 permanent members) of the 15 members of the U.N. Security Council recommend doing so and that recommendation is adopted by two-thirds of the states who are members in the UNGA.