Requests to become a UN member state must pass through the Security Council and then be endorsed by the General Assembly.
The UN Security Council’s president has referred the Palestinian Authority’s application to become a full member of the world body to its committee on the admission of new members.
“The council has decided that this deliberation has to take place during the month of April”, Malta’s UN Ambassador Vanessa Frazier, who holds the current presidency of the council, said after a meeting on Monday afternoon to consider the request.
This follows the PA’s formal request in a letter last week for renewed consideration of its 2011 application to become a full member of the UN body.
Will the United Nations Finally Deliver Justice for Palestine?
“This is a historic moment,” Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour told reporters after the meeting.
“We sincerely hope after 12 years since we change our status to an observer state, that the Security Council will elevate itself to implementing the global consensus on the two state solution by admitting the state of Palestine for full membership.”
On September 23, 2011, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas delivered the initial application to become the 194th member of the UN, before addressing world leaders at the General Assembly.
US Veto
Requests to become a UN member state must pass through the Security Council and then be endorsed by the General Assembly. The US, a staunch ally of Israel, is one of five permanent member states that may veto any action in the council.
The Palestinians have held a non-member observer status at the UN since 2012.
Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan earlier slammed the move by the council, saying that “the Security Council is busy right now discussing the recognition of a ‘PalestiNazi’ state instead of designating Hamas as a terror organization. This will be the vilest reward of the vilest crimes.”
“I will not dignify him by responding to him,” Mansour told reporters, in response.
“I accept the judgement of the General Assembly, I accept the judgement of the 140 states who do recognize the state of Palestine, and we will see what happens in the Security Council.”
On the renewed application, Washington’s UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield has said that the US “position is a position that is known, it hasn’t changed,” adding that they “are going to continue to find a path to bring a two-state solution.”
Death Toll Rises
Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 33,207 Palestinians have been killed, and 75,933 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in the enclave.
Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire’.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
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