The United Nations General Assembly has voted in favour of a Palestinian bid for full UN membership, urging the Security Council to reconsider favourably. The resolution, passed with 143 votes in favour, acknowledges Palestine as qualified for membership but does not grant full status. This push, amid Israel’s war on Gaza and settlement expansion, emphasises peace and freedom.
Approval requires consent from both the Security Council and the General Assembly, with the US likely to veto, again. The resolution grants Palestinians additional privileges starting in September 2024 —like a seat among the UN members in the assembly hall—but they will not be granted a vote in the body.
The United Nations General Assembly backed a Palestinian bid to become a full UN member by recognising it as qualified to join and recommending the UN Security Council reconsider the matter favourably.
The vote, held by the 193-member General Assembly, was a global survey of support for the Palestinian bid to become a full UN member—a move that would effectively recognise a Palestinian State—after the United States vetoed it in the UN Security Council last month.
The assembly adopted a resolution on Friday, with 143 votes in favour and nine against—including the US and Israel—while 25 countries abstained. The Palestinian push for full UN membership comes seven months into a war between Israel and Palestinian resistance group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and as Israel is expanding settlements in the Occupied West Bank, which the UN considers illegal.
“We want peace; we want freedom,” Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour told the General Assembly before 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 said, drawing applause.
Under the founding UN Charter, membership is open to “peace-loving states” that accept the obligations in that document and are able and willing to carry them out.
“As long as so many of you are ‘Jew-hating,’ you don’t really care that the Palestinians are not ‘peace-loving,’” said UN Ambassador, Gilad Erdan, who spoke after Mansour. He accused the Assembly of shredding the UN Charter—as he used a small shredder to destroy a copy of the Charter while at the lectern.
“Shame on you,” Erdan said.
The ambassador said on Monday that if the measure were approved, he expected the US to cut funding to the United Nations and its institutions, following American law.
An application to become a full UN member first needs approval by the 15-member Security Council and then the General Assembly. If the measure is voted on again by the Council, it is likely to face the same fate: a US veto. “The Council must respond to the will of the international community,” United Arab Emirates UN Ambassador Mohamed Abushahab told the assembly before the vote.
The Palestinians are currently a non-member observer state, a de facto recognition of statehood granted by the UN General Assembly in 2012.
The Palestinian UN mission in New York said in a letter to UN member states on Thursday that adoption of the resolution backing full UN membership would be an investment in preserving the long-sought-for two-state solution.
It said it would constitute a clear reaffirmation of support at this very critical moment for the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to an independent state.
The mission is run by the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank. Hamas ousted the Palestinian Authority from power in Gaza in 2007. Hamas launched the October 7 attack on Israel that triggered Israel’s recent assault on Gaza.
The United Nations has long endorsed a vision of two states living side by side within secure and recognised borders. Palestinians want a state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, all territory captured by Israel in the 1967 war with neighbouring Arab states.
The US mission to the United Nations said earlier this week: “It remains the US view that the path towards statehood for the Palestinian people is through direct negotiations.”
Under US law, Washington cannot fund any UN organisation that grants full membership to any group that does not have the “internationally recognised attributes” of statehood. The United States cut funding in 2011 for the UN cultural agency, UNESCO, after the Palestinians joined as a full member.
On Thursday, 25 US Republican senators—more than half of the party’s members in the chamber—introduced a bill to tighten those restrictions and cut off funding to any entity giving rights and privileges to the Palestinians. The bill is unlikely to pass the Senate, which is controlled by President Joe Biden’s Democrats.