The United States on Thursday blocked a U.N. Security Council push for Palestine to become a full U.N. member, frustrating efforts by Palestinian allies to win U.N. support for the effort.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, described the bid for full membership as an effort “to take our rightful place in the international community.”
But Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, on Thursday denounced the resolution before the Security Council as a “prize for terrorism.” He added: “Sadly, the United Nations no longer cares about multilateralism. It is now committed to fighting multiple terrorism.”
The vote on the resolution was 12 in favor, 1 against (United States) and 2 abstentions.
The Security Council has consistently called for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but this outcome failed to materialize during negotiations between the two parties. In Washington, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said the statehood resolution was invalidated upon arrival.
“The United States continues to believe that the fastest path to statehood for the Palestinian people is through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, with the support of the United States and other partners,” Patel told reporters at a news conference on Thursday. .”
The United States and the other four permanent members of the Security Council can veto any action taken by the Security Council. The United States, a staunch ally of Israel, exercised its veto power at a high-profile Security Council meeting on Thursday afternoon to discuss Middle East issues, including Palestinian statehood.
The resolution calls for the 15-member Security Council to recommend Diplomats said they would like the 193-member UN General Assembly to “admit the State of Palestine as a member of the United Nations”. To pass, the application would need to be approved by at least nine votes in favor of the Security Council and no vetoes from the United States, Britain, France, Russia or China. Then, approval by at least two-thirds of the General Assembly is required.
Israel was admitted as a full member of the United Nations in 1949. For decades, the Palestinian Authority has sought to establish a state consisting of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip; these territories have all been occupied or annexed by Israel.The Arab League established the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964 Charter Emphasis on Palestinian self-determination and rejection of Israeli statehood.
Since Israel and the Palestinian Authority signed the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, which established a peace process aimed at a two-state solution, little progress has been made toward statehood. In 2007, the militant group Hamas ousted President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited autonomy in the occupied West Bank, from power in the Gaza Strip.
The war has seen Hamas launch terror attacks against Israel that have killed about 1,200 people and prompted Israeli retaliatory attacks in Gaza that have killed more than 33,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and displaced more than 1 million people. Complicating Palestinian statehood application. The conflict has spread to neighboring countries such as the occupied West Bank and Lebanon, and has drawn Iran into the conflict.
