UNITED NATIONS –
The United States on Thursday vetoed a widely supported U.N. resolution that would have paved the way for the State of Palestine to become a full U.N. member.
The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 12 in favor, the United States against and two abstentions.
The resolution would have recommended that the 193-member General Assembly, where there are no vetoes, approve Palestine becoming the 194th member of the United Nations. Some 140 countries have already recognized the State of Palestine, so its admission would have been approved.
This is the second Palestinian attempt to become a full member of the United Nations, and comes as the war in Gaza, now in its seventh month, has put the more than 75-year-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict center stage.
Before the vote, State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said the United States “has been very clear and consistent that premature actions in New York – even with the best of intentions – will not achieve statehood for the Palestinian people.”
Palestinian membership “must be the result of negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians,” said US Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood. “It’s something that would emerge from the outcome of those negotiations.”
Anything that gets in the way “makes it harder to have those negotiations” and doesn’t help move toward a two-state solution where Israel and Palestine live side by side in peace, something “we all want,” Wood told journalists.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas first submitted the Palestinian Authority’s application for UN membership to then-Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2011. That initial application failed because the Palestinians did not obtain the minimum required support from nine of the 15 members. of the Security Council.
The Palestinians then went to the General Assembly and, by a more than two-thirds majority, succeeded in having their status changed from a UN observer state to a non-member observer state in November 2012. That opened the door for the Palestinian territories to join the UN and other international organizations, including the International Criminal Court.
The Palestinians revived their bid for UN membership in early April, backed by the 140 countries that have recognized Palestine as an independent state.
Ziad Abu Amr, special representative of the Palestinian president, said adopting the resolution would give the Palestinian people hope for “a decent life within an independent state.”
He said that “hope has been dissipated in recent years due to the intransigence of the Israeli government which has publicly and brazenly rejected this solution, especially after the destructive war against the Gaza Strip.”
He stressed before the Security Council that it will not be an alternative “for serious time-bound negotiations to implement the two-state solution” and UN resolutions, and to resolve outstanding issues between Palestinians and Israelis.
Amr asked the United States and other countries that oppose its UN membership how that could harm peace prospects or harm international peace and security when they already recognize Israel and approved its UN membership.
“Granting the State of Palestine full membership will be an important pillar to achieve peace in our region, because the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and its different dimensions now goes beyond the borders of Palestine and Israel and impacts other regions in the Middle East and around. the world,” said the Palestinian envoy.
Negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians have been stalled for years, and Israel’s right-wing government is dominated by hardliners who oppose the creation of a Palestinian state.
Israeli ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan called the resolution “disconnected from the reality on the ground” and warned that it “will only cause destruction in the years to come and harm any possibility of future dialogue.”
Six months after the October 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas, which controlled Gaza, and the murder of 1,200 people in “the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” he accused the Security Council of trying to “reward the perpetrators of these atrocities with statehood.”
Israel’s response military offensive has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and destroyed much of the territory, which speaker after speaker denounced on Thursday.
Erdan listed the requirements for UN membership: accepting the obligations of the UN Charter and, especially, being a “peace-loving” state.
“What a joke,” he said. “Does anyone doubt that the Palestinians did not meet these criteria? Has anyone heard any Palestinian leader even condemn the massacre of our children?