US vetoes resolution supporting Palestinian full UN membership

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States on Thursday vetoed a widely supported U.N. resolution that would have paved the way for Palestine’s full U.N. membership, a goal the Palestinians seek for a long time and which Israel strives to prevent.

The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 12 in favor, with the United States opposed, and two abstentions, from the United Kingdom and Switzerland. U.S. allies France, Japan and South Korea supported the resolution.

The strong support received by the Palestinians reflects not only the growing number of countries recognizing their state, but also almost certainly the global support for Palestinians facing a humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Gaza, now in its seventh month.

The resolution would have recommended that the 193-member United Nations General Assembly, without a veto, approve Palestine becoming the 194th member of the United Nations. Some 140 countries have already recognized Palestine, so its admission would have been approved, probably by a much higher number of countries.

Deputy US Ambassador Robert Wood told the Security Council that the veto “does not reflect opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state but rather a recognition that it will only come through direct negotiations between the parties.

The United States has “always been very clear that premature actions in New York – even with the best intentions – will not achieve statehood for the Palestinian people,” the deputy US Department of Defense spokesperson said. State, Vedant Patel.

His voice sometimes broken, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, told the Council after the vote: “The fact that this resolution has not been adopted will not break our will and will not defeat our determination . »

“We will not stop our efforts,” he said. “The State of Palestine is inevitable. It’s real. Maybe they see it from afar, but we see it closer.

It is the second Palestinian attempt at full membership and comes as the war in Gaza has brought the more than 75-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict to center stage.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas first presented the Palestinian Authority’s application for membership in the UN in 2011. It failed because the Palestinians did not obtain the minimum required support from nine of the 15 members of the Security Council.

They showed up at the General Assembly and succeeded, by a majority of more than two-thirds, in changing their status from UN observer to non-member observer state in 2012. This opened the door to the Palestinian territories to join the UN and other international organizations. , including the International Criminal Court.

Algerian U.N. Ambassador Amar Bendjama, the Arab representative on the council who introduced the resolution, called Palestine’s admission a “crucial step toward correcting a long-standing injustice” and said that “Peace will come from the inclusion of Palestine, not its exclusion.”

In explaining the US veto, Wood said there were “unresolved questions” about whether Palestine met the criteria to be considered a state. He stressed that Hamas still wields power and influence in the Gaza Strip, which is a key part of the Palestinians’ envisioned state.

Wood stressed that the United States’ commitment to a two-state solution, in which Israel and Palestine live side by side in peace, is the only path to security for both sides and allows Israel to establish relations with all its Arab neighbors, including Saudi Arabia. .

“The United States is committed to intensifying our engagement with the Palestinians and the rest of the region, not only to resolve the current crisis in Gaza, but also to advance a political settlement that will pave the way for Palestinian statehood and membership in the UN. ,” he said.

Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, reiterated his commitment to a two-state solution, but said Israel considers Palestine “to constitute a permanent strategic threat.”

“Israel will do its best to block the sovereignty of a Palestinian state and to ensure that the Palestinian people are exiled from their homeland or remain under its occupation forever,” he said.

He asked the Council and the diplomats gathered in the room: “What will the international community do? What will you do?”

Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have 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 reality on the ground” and warned that it “would only cause destruction in the years to come and harm any chance of dialogue future “.

Six months after the October 7 attack by the militant group Hamas, which controlled Gaza, and the death of 1,200 people in “the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” he accused the Security Council of seek “to reward the perpetrators of these atrocities with a state.

The Israeli military offensive in response has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and destroyed much of the territory, something speakers denounced Thursday.

After the vote, Erdan thanked the United States and especially President Joe Biden “for standing up for truth and morality in the face of hypocrisy and politics.”

He called the Palestinian Authority – which controls the West Bank and which the United States wants to seize Gaza, where Hamas still has influence – “an entity supporting terrorism”.

The Israeli ambassador to the UN spoke about the requirements for becoming a UN member – accepting the obligations of the UN Charter and being a “peace-loving” state.

“How can you seriously say that Palestinians love peace? How?” asked Erdan. “The Palestinians are paying terrorists, paying them to massacre us. None of their leaders condemn terrorism, nor the massacre of October 7. They call Hamas their brothers.

Despite the Palestinians’ failure to meet the criteria for UN membership, Erdan said most council members supported him.

“It is very sad because your vote will only further embolden Palestinian rejection and make peace almost impossible,” he said.