The United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly passed a resolution asking the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) to reconsider granting full membership to the Palestinians – a move that would constitute de facto U.N. recognition of Palestinian statehood.
The General Assembly resolution, which is non-binding, passed with 143 nations in support, nine against, and 25 abstentions. The United States and Israel were among the nine votes against.
The resolution declared that the Palestinians meet all the requirements for membership, and that therefore the UNSC should “reconsider the matter favorably.”
The General Assembly cannot confer full membership on its own, but the resolution did bestow some privileges upon the Palestinians, including a non-voting seat among member nations in the U.N. Assembly hall.
The final draft of the resolution was carefully rewritten at the behest of China and Russia so that it could not be used as a precedent by people those murderous regimes are oppressing, such as Taiwan. It also had to be tailored to avoid triggering a U.S. law that would cut off funding for the United Nations if it recognized statehood for an organization that does not meet the requirements for such a designation.
The Security Council considered granting membership to the Palestinians in April, but the United States used its veto power to block the move, though the Biden administration had dropped some hints that it might not use its veto because it had grown displeased with Israel’s conduct of the Gaza war.
The U.S. partially justified its veto by noting there are “unresolved questions as to whether the applicant meets the criteria to be considered a State” – a point the General Assembly seemed to be addressing on Friday by insisting the Palestinians do meet those conditions.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, furiously denounced the General Assembly vote on Friday as an “immoral act” and a violation of the U.N. Charter. He fed a printed copy of the charter into a paper shredder as he spoke to emphasize his point.
Erdan said the U.N. was trying to allow a “terror state” into its ranks, led by Hamas, the “Hitlers of our time.”
“It is during our sacred week that this shameless body has chosen to reward modern-day Nazis with rights and privileges?” he asked incredulously, referring to Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance observance, Yom HaShoah.
“You are about to grant privileges and rights to the future terrorist state of Hamas. You have opened the U.N. to modern-day Nazis, to genocidal jihadists committed to establishing an Islamic state against Israel and the region… It makes me sick,” he said.
“This day will go down in infamy,” Erdan declared.
Palestinian permanent observer to the U.N. Riyad Mansour hailed the vote as a denunciation of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
“I stand before you as famine is settling in, by design and by the decision of the Israel government, killing the most vulnerable among our people, women and children,” Mansour said.
“I stand before you as the Israel prime minister is ready to kill thousands more to ensure his political survival, as he openly declares the Palestinian people an existential threat and together, with his co-conspirators, continues 76 years after the Nakba, to try and finish the job,” he said. Nakba or “catastrophe” is the Palestinian term for the aftermath of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
The U.S. mission to the United Nations said on Friday that if full Palestinian membership is brought before the UNSC, the United States will once again use its veto to block the measure.
“Efforts to advance this resolution do not change the reality that the Palestinian Authority does not currently meet the criteria for U.N. membership under the U.N. Charter. Additionally, the draft resolution does not alter the status of the Palestinians as a “non-member state observer mission,” said spokesperson Nathan Evans.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.