Palestinians vow to fight on after US vetoes full UN membership for Palestine

New York: The US has vetoed a wide backed UN solution that would person paved the mode for Palestine to execute afloat rank of the United Nations, a extremity the Palestinians person agelong sought and Israel has worked to prevent.

The ballot successful the 15-member Security Council ended with 12 successful favour, the United States opposed and 2 abstentions, from the United Kingdom and Switzerland. US allies France, Japan and South Korea supported the resolution.

Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour speaks during a Security Council gathering astatine United Nations headquarters.Credit: AP

The beardown enactment the Palestinians received reflects not lone the increasing fig of countries recognising their statehood but astir surely the planetary enactment for Palestinians facing the humanitarian situation caused by the warfare successful Gaza, present successful its seventh month.

The solution by the assembly would person recommended that the full 193-member UN General Assembly, wherever determination are nary vetoes, o.k. Palestine becoming the 194th subordinate of the United Nations. Some 140 countries person already recognised Palestine, truthful its admittance would person been approved, apt by a overmuch higher fig of countries.

US lawman ambassador Robert Wood told the Security Council that the veto “does not bespeak absorption to Palestinian statehood but alternatively is an acknowledgment that it volition lone travel from nonstop negotiations betwixt the parties”.

The US has “been precise wide consistently that premature actions successful New York – adjacent with the champion intentions – volition not execute statehood for the Palestinian people,” lawman State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said.

His dependable breaking astatine times, Palestinian US ambassador Riyad Mansour told the assembly aft the vote: “The information that this solution did not walk volition not interruption our volition and it volition not decision our determination”.

“We volition not halt successful our effort,” helium said. “The authorities of Palestine is inevitable. It is real. Perhaps they spot it arsenic acold away, but we spot it arsenic near.”

This is the 2nd Palestinian effort for afloat rank and comes arsenic the warfare successful Gaza has enactment the much than 75-year-old Israeli-Palestinian struggle astatine centre stage.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is based successful the West Bank, archetypal delivered the Palestinian Authority’s exertion for UN rank successful 2011. It failed due to the fact that the Palestinians didn’t get the required minimum enactment of 9 of the Security Council’s 15 members.

They went to the General Assembly and succeeded by much than a two-thirds bulk successful having their presumption raised from a UN perceiver to a non-member perceiver authorities successful 2012. That opened the doorway for the Palestinian territories to articulation UN and different planetary organisations, including the International Criminal Court.

Loading

Algerian UN ambassador Amar Bendjama, the Arab typical connected the assembly who introduced the resolution, called Palestine’s admittance “a captious measurement toward rectifying a longstanding injustice” and said that “peace volition travel from Palestine’s inclusion, not from its exclusion”.

In explaining the US veto, Wood said determination were “unresolved questions” connected whether Palestine met the criteria to beryllium considered a state. He pointed to Hamas inactive exerting powerfulness and power successful the Gaza Strip, which is simply a cardinal portion of the authorities envisioned by the Palestinians.

Wood stressed that the US committedness to a two-state solution, wherever Israel and Palestine unrecorded side-by-side successful peace, is the lone way for information for some sides and for Israel to found relations with each its Arab neighbours, including Saudi Arabia.

Loading

“The United States is committed to intensifying its engagement with the Palestinians and the remainder of the region, not lone to code the existent situation successful Gaza, but to beforehand a governmental colony that volition make a way to Palestinian statehood and rank successful the United Nations,” helium said.

Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador, reiterated the committedness to a two-state solution but asserted that Israel believes Palestine “is a imperishable strategical threat”.

“Israel volition bash its champion to artifact the sovereignty of a Palestinian authorities and to marque definite that the Palestinian radical are exiled distant from their homeland oregon stay nether its concern forever,” helium said.

He demanded of the assembly and diplomats crowded successful the chamber: “What volition the planetary assemblage do? What volition you do?”

Israeli-Palestinian negotiations person been stalled for years, and Israel’s right-wing authorities is dominated by hardliners who reason Palestinian statehood.

Israeli UN ambassador Gilad Erdan called the solution “disconnected to the world connected the ground” and warned it would “cause lone demolition for years to travel and harm immoderate accidental for aboriginal dialogue”.

Six months aft the October 7 onslaught connected confederate Israel by the Hamas militant group, which controlled Gaza, and the sidesplitting of 1200 radical successful “the astir brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” helium accused the Security Council of seeking “to reward the perpetrators of these atrocities with statehood”.

Israel’s subject violative successful effect has killed much than 32,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and destroyed overmuch of the territory, which talker aft talker denounced astatine the voting session.

After the vote, Erdan thanked the US and peculiarly President Joe Biden “for lasting up for information and morality successful the look of hypocrisy and politics”.

He called the Palestinian Authority – which controls the West Bank and the US wants to spot instrumentality implicit Gaza wherever Hamas inactive has sway – “a panic supporting entity”.

Erdan referred to the requirements for rank – accepting the obligations successful the UN Charter and being a “peace-loving” state.

“How tin you accidental earnestly that the Palestinians are bid loving? How?” Erdan asked. “The Palestinians are paying terrorists, paying them to slaughter us. None of their leaders condemns terrorism, nor the October 7 massacre. They telephone Hamas their brothers.”

Despite the Palestinian nonaccomplishment to conscionable the criteria for membership, Erdan said astir assembly members supported it.

“It’s precise bittersweet due to the fact that your ballot volition lone embolden Palestinian rejectionism adjacent much and marque bid astir impossible,” helium said.

AP

Most Viewed successful World

Loading