The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of granting the Palestinian territories expanded rights and privileges as a U.N. “observer state” on Friday, but stopped short of granting full membership within the body.
The General Assembly voted 143–9 to grant the expanded non-member rights to the Palestinian delegation. The United States, Israel, Argentina, Czechia, Hungary, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, and Papua New Guinea were the nine member nations to oppose these expanded rights. Twenty-five other member nations abstained from the vote.
The new non-member privileges allow a Palestinian delegation to be seated among the alphabetical order of the U.N. member nations, make statements before the body on behalf of the Palestinian people, offer and co-sponsor proposals and amendments on U.N. actions, and propose items for the U.N. regular or special session agendas.
The expanded privileges also allow members of the Palestinian delegation to be elected as officers in the plenary and Main Committees of the U.N. General Assembly and to participate in conferences and meetings organized under the auspices of the General Assembly.
The U.N. Security Council still must approve a separate resolution for the Palestinian territories to receive full U.N. member status before the international body can vote on whether to confer that status. The delegation for the United States, one of five permanent members on the 15-member security council that has veto power, voted against a resolution to advance full U.N. membership status for the Palestinian territories in April.
The resolution passed by the General Assembly on Friday calls for the Security Council to reconsider and grant “favorable consideration” for full Palestinian membership within the United Nations.
The U.S. delegation has insisted it supports eventual Palestinian statehood but said last month’s Security Council vote and Friday’s General Assembly vote do not provide the right solution.
“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 acknowledgment that statehood will come only from a process that involves direct negotiations between the parties,” Robert Wood, the alternate U.S. representative for special political affairs, said Friday.
Among those states abstaining the vote was the United Kingdom. Like her U.S. counterpart, UK Ambassador Barbara Woodward said the country’s delegation remains “firmly committed” to a two-state solution entailing a Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state of Israel. But Ms. Woodward said such Palestinian statehood cannot progress amid the ongoing fighting in the Gaza Strip.
Ms. Woodward said that if the Hamas terrorist group releases hostages it took on Oct. 7, it will allow for an at least temporary pause in the fighting, adding, “We must then work together to turn that pause into a sustainable, permanent ceasefire.”
Palestinian Delegation: Vote Gets Us ‘One Step Closer’ to ‘Rightful Place’
The Palestinian U.N. delegation celebrated the expansion of its non-member rights and raised the anticipation for full U.N. membership.
“77 years after the General Assembly voted to partition Palestine, today it voted to correct this historic injustice by bringing Palestine one step closer to its rightful place among nations,” the Palestinian U.N. delegation wrote in a social media post on Friday.
The Friday social media post references U.N. Resolution 181, a contentious resolution adopted on Nov. 29, 1947, which called for the British government to end their administration over a region referred to as Mandatory Palestine, to make way for “the future government of Palestine,” which was to be partitioned into a Jewish State controlling about 56 percent of the land and an Arab State controlling about 42 percent of the land.
The Palestinian U.N. delegation thanked the majority of U.N. member states who voted in favor of the resolution Friday. Riyad Mansour, a Palestinian representative to the U.N., also expressed gratitude to participants of recent pro-Palestinian protest events at Columbia University and other events around the world for their activism.
Police have been called in recent days to clear out pro-Palestinian encampments at Columbia University and other college campuses throughout the country, amid complaints they are disrupting campus life and harassing and intimidating Jewish and Israeli students.
During his speech before the general assembly, Mr. Mansour took the time to highlight the humanitarian toll of the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Delegate Shreds UN Charter in Front of Assembly
Israeli diplomats condemned the U.N. General Assembly’s decision on Friday, accusing the body of rewarding terrorism.
“The political theater called the UN has adopted an artificial decision, detached from reality, which only encourages terrorism. Israel seeks peace, and peace will only be achieved through direct negotiation between the parties,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said.
Mr. Katz thanked the eight other U.N. member nations who voted alongside Israel against expanding the Palestinian delegation’s non-member privileges.
Israel’s U.N. representative, Gilad Erdan, took his protests a step further during a speech before the General Assembly on Friday, taking several pages from a copy of the U.N. charter and stuffing them into a miniature document shredder as delegates from other nations looked on.
In a 12-minute speech, Mr. Erdan said the United Nations was founded after World War II to prevent the rise of another threat like that of Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler. Mr. Erdan said the Friday U.N. vote would do the “exact opposite” of its founding mission “and advance the establishment of a Palestinian Terror state which will be led by the Hitler of our times.”
Mr. Erdan said Hamas, a U.S. and Israeli-designated terrorist group, is currently positioned as the most favored popular political faction within Palestinian society. While the Palestinian delegation exists under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority—which is run by a rival political faction of Hamas called Fatah—Mr. Erdan said the Palestinian Authority also supports terrorism.
“In every poll Hamas today is predicted to win Palestinian elections—if they ever happen—so today the general assembly is not only about to grant the rights of a state to the Palestinian Terror Authority, today you are also about to grant privileges and rights to the future terror state of Hamas,” the Israeli U.N. representative said.
Mr. Erdan concluded his speech by saying the Friday vote renders the U.N. charter “meaningless”
“Today, you are gutting, gutting the charter, and you are doing it in the wake of the most brutal massacre of my people since the Holocaust, on the ashes of the October 7th massacre,” Mr. Erdan said just moments before he began feeding pages of the U.N. charter into his shredder.
Around 1,200 people were killed and thousands more were injured during the Oct. 7 attack. Hamas took around 240 people back to the Gaza Strip as hostages.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.