UN General Assembly votes in favor of Palestine’s bid for statehood

An overwhelming majority of United Nations member states voted on Friday to support Palestine’s application for full membership of the international body at a General Assembly session in New York. 

Recognition as a member state of the UN would represent effective recognition of the state of Palestine. 

Palestine currently holds observer status at the organ of international diplomacy, with its bid for full membership opposed by Israel and the United States, which recently vetoed a Security Council vote on Palestine’s full membership.

The two were among nine countries in total who voted on Friday against the resolution prepared by a coalition that includes Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as a handful of other states in the Gulf, Africa and South America.

143 member states voted in favor of adopting the resolution, which recommends that the Security Council “reconsider the matter favorably.” There were 25 abstentions.

The vote upgrades Palestine’s status at the UN but does not grant it full membership, which requires a special recommendation from the Security Council. “The vote in favor signals a shift in Palestine’s diplomatic heft within the entire UN system,” a UN publication noted on Friday.

As a result, Palestine’s UN representatives will have the right to attend sessions and to participate in making proposals to the UN General Assembly when its new session starts in September. It will not be granted the right to vote or put forward its candidature to organs such as the Security Council or the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). 

The vote was put forward at an emergency special session on the Gaza crisis, coming in the seventh month of Israel’s genocide in Gaza which has killed at least has killed 34,943 people so far, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Friday. Israel reportedly decided on Friday evening to expand its ongoing operation in Rafah, where around 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are currently taking shelter. 

Palestine’s Permanent Observer to the UN, Riyad Mansour, told the assembly before the vote that after fifty years of holding observer status, “we wish from all those who invoke the UN Charter to abide by the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination guaranteed by the Charter.”

“The lives lost cannot be restored,” said Mansour. “A ‘Yes’ vote is a vote for Palestinian existence, it is not against any state but it is against attempts to deprive us of our State.” 

The US’ UN representative, Robert Wood, claimed that his country did not oppose Palestinian statehood, suggesting that it would continue to veto a Security Council vote on Palestine’s full UN membership. “Should the Security Council take up the Palestinian membership application as a result of this resolution, there will be a similar outcome,” he said on Friday. 

Wood added that Palestinian statehood would only come “from a process that involves direct negotiations between the parties,” adding that “there is no other path that guarantees Israel’s security and future as a democratic Jewish state.”

Israel’s Permanent Representative to the UN Gilad Erdan described the vote as welcoming a “terrorist state” into the UN Charter, called it “a day of infamy” and held up a portable paper shredder and inserted the cover of the UN Charter into it.