UN Normal Meeting backs Palestinian bid for membership By Reuters

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -The United Nations Normal Meeting on Friday overwhelmingly backed a Palestinian bid to change into a full U.N. member by recognizing it as certified to hitch and recommending the U.N. Safety Council “reconsider the matter favorably.”

The vote by the 193-member Normal Meeting was a worldwide survey of assist for the Palestinian bid to change into a full U.N. member – a transfer that will successfully acknowledge a Palestinian state – after the US vetoed it within the U.N. Safety Council final month.

The meeting adopted a decision with 143 votes in favor and 9 towards – together with the U.S. and Israel – whereas 25 nations abstained. It doesn’t give the Palestinians full U.N. membership, however merely acknowledges them as certified to hitch.

The decision “determines that the State of Palestine … should therefore be admitted to membership” and it “recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter favorably.”

The Palestinian push for full U.N. membership comes seven months right into a struggle between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas within the Gaza Strip, and as Israel is increasing settlements within the occupied West Financial institution, which the U.N. considers to be unlawful.

“We want peace, we want freedom,” Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour instructed the meeting earlier than the vote. “A yes vote is a vote for Palestinian existence, it is not against any state. … It is an investment in peace.”

“Voting yes is the right thing to do,” he mentioned in remarks that drew applause.

Below the founding U.N. Constitution, membership is open to “peace-loving states” that settle for the obligations in that doc and are ready and prepared to hold them out.

“As long as so many of you are ‘Jew-hating,’ you don’t really care that the Palestinians are not ‘peace-loving’,” U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan, who spoke after Mansour, instructed his fellow diplomats. He accused the meeting of shredding the U.N. Constitution – as he used a small shredder to destroy a replica of the Constitution whereas on the lectern.

“Shame on you,” Erdan mentioned.

An utility to change into a full U.N. member first must be authorised by the 15-member Safety Council after which the Normal Meeting. If the measure is once more voted on by the council it’s more likely to face the identical destiny: a U.S. veto.

ADDITIONAL U.N. RIGHTSDeputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wooden instructed the Normal Meeting after the vote that unilateral measures on the U.N. and on the bottom is not going to advance a two-state answer.

“Our vote does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood; we have been very clear that we support it and seek to advance it meaningfully. Instead, it is an acknowledgement that statehood will only come from a process that involves direct negotiations between the parties,” he mentioned.

The United Nations has lengthy endorsed a imaginative and prescient of two states dwelling aspect by aspect inside safe and acknowledged borders. Palestinians desire a state within the West Financial institution, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, all territory captured by Israel within the 1967 struggle with neighboring Arab states.

The Normal Meeting decision adopted on Friday does give the Palestinians some further rights and privileges from September 2024 – like a seat among the many U.N. members within the meeting corridor – however they won’t be granted a vote within the physique.

The Palestinians are at the moment a non-member observer state, a de facto recognition of statehood that was granted by the U.N. Normal Meeting in 2012.

They’re represented on the U.N. by the Palestinian Authority, which workout routines restricted self-rule within the West Financial institution. Hamas ousted the Palestinian Authority from energy in Gaza in 2007. Hamas – which has a constitution calling for Israel’s destruction – launched the Oct. 7 assault on Israel that triggered Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Erdan mentioned on Monday that, if the Normal Meeting adopted the decision, he anticipated Washington to chop funding to the United Nations and its establishments.

Below U.S. regulation, Washington can not fund any U.N. group that grants full membership to any group that doesn’t have the “internationally recognized attributes” of statehood. America minimize funding in 2011 for the U.N. cultural company, UNESCO, after the Palestinians joined as a full member.

On Thursday, 25 Republican U.S. senators – greater than half of the occasion’s members within the chamber – launched a invoice to tighten these restrictions and minimize off funding to any entity giving rights and privileges to the Palestinians. The invoice is unlikely to move the Senate, which is managed by President Joe Biden’s Democrats.