The UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Friday (May 10) in support of a Palestinian bid for full membership of the world body, a symbolic move after the United States vetoed the measure in the Security Council.
The resolution, which states that the Palestinians should be admitted to the UN and grants them some additional rights as observers, received 143 votes for, 9 against and 25 abstentions.
The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority said the UN vote showed Palestine “deserves full membership”.
“I have stood hundreds of times before at this podium, but never for a more significant vote than the one about to take place, a historic one,” Palestinian ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour said before the vote, his voice full of emotion.
He added: “The day will come where Palestine will take its rightful place among the community of free nations.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said it sent the message to Hamas that “violence pays off”.
Israel’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan said the resolution made him sick: “With this new precedent, we may see here representatives of ISIS or Boko Haram that will sit among us,” Erdan said, referring to two jihadist groups.
He said it would give “the rights of a state to an entity that is already partly controlled by terrorists and will be replaced by a force of child-murdering Hamas rapists”.
US Deputy Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood called the resolution “an unproductive text”.
While “our vote does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood”, Wood said after the resolution passed, “it remains the US view that unilateral measures at the UN and on the ground will not advance this goal”.
With the war in Gaza raging, the Palestinians in April relaunched a request dating back to 2011 to become full members of the United Nations, where their current status is that of a “nonmember observer state.”
To succeed, the initiative needed a Security Council green light and then a two-thirds majority vote in the General Assembly.
But the United States – one of five veto-holding members on the Security Council and Israel’s closest ally – blocked it on Apr 18.
The resolution, introduced by the United Arab Emirates, says: “The State of Palestine is qualified for membership in the United Nations by Article 4 of the Charter and should therefore be admitted.”
It calls on the Security Council to “reconsider the matter favorably.”
The United States, however, opposes any recognition of statehood outside of a bilateral accord between the Palestinians and Israel, whose current right-wing government is adamantly opposed to a two-state solution.
