The UN General Assembly is expected to vote later today on an Arab League-drafted resolution that would grant new “rights and privileges” to Palestine and call on the Security Council to favourably reconsider its request to become the 194th member of the United Nations.
It comes three weeks after the US vetoed a widely backed council resolution that would have paved the way for full UN membership for Palestine.
Under the UN Charter, the Security Council must recommend the admission of prospective members of the world body to the General Assembly for final approval. Palestine has been a UN non-member observer state since 2012.
“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,” US deputy ambassador Robert Wood said on Thursday. “We have said from the beginning the best way to ensure Palestinian full membership in the UN is to do that through negotiations with Israel. That remains our position.”
But unlike the Security Council, there are no vetoes in the 193-member General Assembly and the resolution is expected to be approved by a large majority.
TWEET YOUR COMMENT