UN assembly grants Palestine new rights and revives its membership bid

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. General Assembly voted by a wide margin on Friday to grant new “rights and privileges” to Palestine and called on the Security Council to favorably reconsider its request to become the 194th member of the United Nations.

The 193-member world body approved the Arab and Palestinian-sponsored resolution by a vote of 143-9 with 25 abstentions.

The United States vetoed a widely backed council resolution on April 18 that would have paved the way for full United Nations membership for Palestine, a goal the Palestinians have long sought and Israel has worked to prevent.

U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood made clear on Thursday that the Biden administration opposed the assembly resolution. The United States was among the nine countries voting against it, along with Israel.

“We’ve been very clear from the beginning there is a process for obtaining full membership in the United Nations, and this effort by some of the Arab countries and the Palestinians is to try to go around that,” Wood said Thursday. “We have said from the beginning the best way to ensure Palestinian full membership in the U.N. is to do that through negotiations with Israel. That remains our position.”

Under the U.N. Charter, prospective members of the United Nations must be “peace-loving,” and the Security Council must recommend their admission to the General Assembly for final approval. Palestine became a U.N. non-member observer state in 2012.

The resolution “determines” that a state of Palestine is qualified for membership — dropping the original language that in the General Assembly’s judgment it is “a peace-loving state.” It therefore recommends that the Security Council reconsider its request “favorably.”

The renewed push for full Palestinian membership in the U.N. comes as the war in Gaza has put the more than 75-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict at center stage. At numerous council and assembly meetings, the humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinians in Gaza and the killing of more than 34,000 people in the territory, according to Gaza health officials, have generated outrage from many countries.

The original draft of the assembly resolution was changed significantly to address concerns not only by the U.S. but also by Russia and China, according to three Western diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because negotiations were private.

The first draft would have conferred on Palestine “the rights and privileges necessary to ensure its full and effective participation” in the assembly’s sessions and U.N. conferences “on equal footing with member states.” It also made no reference to whether Palestine could vote in the General Assembly.

According to the diplomats, Russia and China, which are strong supporters of Palestine’s U.N. membership, were concerned that granting the list of rights and privileges detailed in an annex to the resolution could set a precedent for other would-be U.N. members — with Russia concerned about Kosovo and China about Taiwan.

Under longstanding legislation by the U.S. Congress, the United States is required to cut off funding to U.N. agencies that give full membership to a Palestinian state — which could mean a cutoff in dues and voluntary contributions to the U.N. from its largest contributor.

The final draft drops the language that would put Palestine “on equal footing with member states.” And to address Chinese and Russian concerns, it would decide “on an exceptional basis and without setting a precedent” to adopt the rights and privileges in the annex.

The draft also adds a provision in the annex on the issue of voting, stating categorically: “The state of Palestine, in its capacity as an observer state, does not have the right to vote in the General Assembly or to put forward its candidature to United Nations organs.”

The final list of rights and privileges in the draft annex includes giving Palestine the right to speak on all issues not just those related to the Palestinians and Middle East, the right to propose agenda items and reply in debates, and the right to be elected as officers in the assembly’s main committees. It would give the Palestinians the right to participate in U.N. and international conferences convened by the United Nations — but it drops their “right to vote” which was in the original draft.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas first delivered the Palestinian Authority’s application for U.N. membership in 2011. It failed because the Palestinians didn’t get the required minimum support of nine of the Security Council’s 15 members.

They went to the General Assembly and succeeded by more than a two-thirds majority in having their status raised from a U.N. observer to a non-member observer state. That opened the door for the Palestinian territories to join U.N. and other international organizations, including the International Criminal Court.

In the Security Council vote on April 18, the Palestinians got much more support for full U.N. membership. The vote was 12 in favor, the United Kingdom and Switzerland abstaining, and the United States voting no and vetoing the resolution.

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