The vast majority of countries on Earth voted at the United Nations General Assembly to endorse full membership for Palestine.
On May 10, 143 of the UN’s 193 member states supported a resolution that called to make Palestine a full member. However the United States, Israel, and seven small countries, representing just 5% of the global population, stood against the rest of the planet, opposing the measure.
In April, the US government used its veto power in the UN Security Council to kill a resolution that would have allowed Palestine to be recognized as a full member.
Palestine is an observer state in the United Nations, but without the approval of the Security Council, it cannot be admitted as a full member.
The combined population of the nine UN member states that voted against full membership for Palestine is just around 429 million, according to US government statistics:
- United States – 342 million
- Argentina – 47 million
- Czechia – 10.8 million
- Papua New Guinea – 10 million
- Hungary – 9.9 million
- Israel – 9.4 million
- Micronesia – 99,603
- Palau – 21,864
- Nauru – 9,892
Although these countries only represent 5% of the world population, the United States can oppose the will of the international community because it has veto power on the Security Council.
It is thus Washington that is denying the Palestinian people their rights to sovereignty and a state, as enshrined in international law. The only obstacle standing in the way of full UN membership for Palestine is the United States.
President Joe Biden and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken have repeatedly claimed to support a “two-state solution” in Israel-Palestine, but have opposed all attempts at giving the Palestinian people a state.
Opposition to Palestinian sovereignty is bipartisan in the US, uniting both the Republican and Democratic Parties.
In March, Biden condemned Hungary’s right-wing President Viktor Orbán as a “dictator”. Orbán is an ally of Trump, whom Biden also ardently criticizes. Yet all three are allied in support of Israel and in opposition to Palestinian sovereignty.
A poll conducted in April found that a majority of Democrats believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Most Republicans do not believe Israel is committing genocide. Biden is therefore allied with Republicans, against the base of his own party.
The General Assembly resolution that was voted on on May 10 asserted that “the State of Palestine is qualified for membership in the United Nations in accordance with Article 4 of the Charter of the United Nations and should therefore be admitted to membership in the United Nations”.
It called to allow “the participation of the State of Palestine in the sessions and work of the General Assembly and the international conferences convened under the auspices of the Assembly or other organs of the United Nations”.
The resolution likewise reaffirmed “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to their independent State of Palestine”, and demanded “an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967”, which violates international law.
25 countries abstained in the May 10 vote. These included Germany, Italy, and several other European states, along with Canada and Ukraine.
Ukraine’s post-2014, pro-NATO government has allied closely with Israel and opposed Palestinian sovereignty.
Roughly three-quarters of countries on Earth, 143 out of the total 193 UN members states, already have established official diplomatic relations with Palestine. It is principally the West that refuses to do so.
A Clubbable Admission: Palestine’s Case for UN Membership
by Binoy Kampmark / May 11th, 2024
I find it rather difficult to make it clear to my children why we are not eligible, for from one point of view it isn’t quite clear to me.
X, “The Jew and the Club,” The Atlantic, October 1924.
It must surely make certain ethnic and religious groups reflect, notably those languishing in minority status for decades, if not centuries. There was a time when the rental advertisements in London had such caustic couplings as “Irish and Blacks need not apply.” Oxbridge bursaries and scholarships, in all their variety, reveal a tapestry of personal prejudice and lively bigotry. In terms of recreational clubs, the east coast, moneyed establishment in the United States prided itself from keeping Jews out of the membership circle, notably in such mind destroying facilities as golfing establishments. The wall was impervious, idiotic, resistant.
The United Nations, yet another, albeit larger club, functions on similar principles. Do you have the right credentials to natter, moan and partake in the body’s constituent parts? Do you satisfy the seemingly elementary criteria proposed in the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States? (These are: a permanent population, a defined territory, an identifiable government and a capacity to enter into relations with other states.) Meeting that threshold, the assumption of recognised statehood and, it follows membership, should be a matter of minor controversy.
What is not mentioned in the United Nations Charter is the political dimension that boils beneath the text: states who are refused admission, let alone recognition, on grounds petty or substantial. All clubs, it follows, are institutions oiled by the tenacity of small minds and rarely troubled by actual principle.
For Palestinians, the still incomplete road to recognition, let alone UN membership, has been particularly potholed. In November 1988, the Palestine National Council, the legislative wing of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, declared the existence of the State of Palestine. In 2011, an application was made for admission to the United Nations. All the way, their claims have been challenged. Israel, having pinched Palestinian land, guards the door to admission with zeal, and confident, for the most part, that a viable Palestinian state will never come into being.
On May 10, the UN General Assembly resolved (143 votes in favour, nine against, including the drearily predictable US and Israel, iced with 25 abstentions) to sanitise the Palestinian application to become a member of the club. The significantly diluted resolution throbs with enormous condescension, more a nod and wink than anything significant.
The summary from the UN does little to dispel this assumption, suggesting an “upgrade” to “the rights of the State of Palestine within the world body, but not the right to vote or put forward its candidature to such organs as the Security Council or the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).” The Assembly merely found Palestine a suitable candidate for full membership, recommending the Security Council “reconsider the matter favourably”.
What, then, can the Palestinian delegation actually do with its revised status? From September, delegates will be able to make, for instance, statements on behalf of a group, submitting proposals and amendments and their introduction. They will qualify for election as officers in the plenary and Main Committees of the General Assembly. They will also be able to fully participate “in UN conferences and international conferences and meetings convened under the auspices of the General Assembly or, as appropriate, of other UN organs.” Hardly breathtaking, though an improvement on the current “observer status” which should be designated “spectator status”.
Like an applicant to the Garrick Club in London or the Savage Club in Melbourne, private institutions long in tooth and vanity, their membership heavy with colostomy bags and short of females, the Palestinians were found to be partially deserving. In other words, they had, in circumstances absurd and crude, been deemed by the UN’s largest forum to be potentially clubbable. Exercising all rights of membership will ultimately depend on what the big boys and gals on the Security Council, notably the permanent five, say.
Some clue of what will happen when the matter comes up for discussion in the Security Council can already be gathered by the sinking of a previous resolution for Palestinian admission last month. The Algerian sponsored resolution was quashed by the United States as a matter of course, despite receiving 12 approvals. The grounds for doing so were familiar: recognised statehood could only spring from “a comprehensive peace agreement.” Sustainable peace was only possible “via a two-State solution with Israel’s security guaranteed.” All other matters, including the debate on admission, were “premature”.
All of this makes the reaction from Israel’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, all the more absurd. Before fellow delegates, the intemperate representative sported a miniature shredder in which he placed a copy of the UN Charter, declaring that granting Palestinians greater rights of representation entailed the following message: “you are telling the child-murdering Hamas rapists that terror pays off.” In that statement can be detected the echoes of such founding representatives of Israel as Ben Gurion and Menachim Begin, all of whom were well-versed in the calculus of violence and its ill-gotten rewards.
The unhinged Erdan, perhaps unwittingly, revealed a perspective many had suspected: that Israeli policy towards the Palestinians is one of conflation, denigration and the eradication of distinctions. All are terrorists of the animal variety, as Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, would have it, and all are, at best, only suitable for playing a subservient role on the international stage.
“We always knew that Hamas hides in schools,” moaned Erdan. “We just didn’t realise that it’s not only in schools in Gaza. It’s also Harvard, Colombia and many elite universities.” If all that was, indeed, true, then any improvement in the Palestinian situation, culminating in the UN General Assembly vote, must surely be regarded as pitifully modest. Palestine remains, at the end of the day, ineligible for full club membership.
A Modest Proposal: The UN General Assembly and Palestinian Recognition
by Binoy Kampmark / May 10th, 2024
Despite being described in some circles as such, the latest vote in the United Nations General Assembly on Palestine’s status is hardly extraordinary. For one, it does not vest the Palestinian territories with statehood but burnishes its credentials to join the club. It pushes those scrappy, desperate entities so despoiled and abused into deeper involvement with the processes at the UN itself. Palestinian non-observer status, granted in 2012, has left it mute in international affairs.
The May 10 resolution is seen, according to a summary from the UN, as an improvement, an “upgrade” to “the rights of the State of Palestine within the world body, but not the right to vote or put forward its candidature to such organs as the Security Council or the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).” The Assembly found Palestine a suitable candidate for full membership, recommending the Security Council “reconsider the matter favourably”.
The resolution was adopted with 143 votes in favour and nine against, including US and Israel, with 25 abstentions.
The grant of Palestinian membership requires a recommendation from the most powerful arm of the UN, the Security Council. In that body, the United States vigilantly protects Israeli interests and can be relied upon to stultify moves towards Palestinian statehood. Just last month, an Algerian sponsored resolution seeking Palestine’s admission as a state was quashed by Washington’s exercise of the veto. Palestinian Statehood could only come into being, argued the US representative, from “a comprehensive peace agreement.” Sustainable peace was only possible “via a two-State solution with Israel’s security guaranteed.” The resolution as it stood was a “premature” action.
Such reasons have become stale, a de facto acceptance that any Palestinian entity, should it ever arise, would be impotent on the international stage, defenceless, impoverished and subservient to Israel’s interests. For Israel, national security entails an impotent Palestine.
As things stand, the changes that will take effect from September 10 are hardly a reason for critics to stamp their feet or for supporters to roar with approval. The new status will permit, among others changes, seating alongside Member States in alphabetical order, the making of statements on behalf of a group, submitting proposals and amendments and their introduction, the right of delegate members to be elected as officers in the plenary and Main Committees of the General Assembly and “full effective participation in UN conferences and international conferences and meetings convened under the auspices of the General Assembly or, as appropriate, of other UN organs.”
With limitations duly noted, the momentum towards a more formal recognition of Palestinian statehood, and one the US-Israel partnership is increasingly losing control of, is unmistakable. In an interview on Spanish national radio RNE on May 9, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, confirmed the veracity of Irish media reports that Spain, Ireland, and a number of other EU countries will recognise a Palestinian state this month.
The General Assembly resolution proved unpalatable to Israel, whose ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, was melodramatic and histrionic in response. Having come equipped with a shredder (a wonderful piece of equipment for a diplomat), he proceeded to place a copy of the UN Charter into it. “I shredded the ‘UN Charter’,” he explained, “to illustrate what the General Assembly is doing by subverting the Security Council and supporting the entry of a terror entity.”
Erdan’s reasoning, which can be taken to be that of the Netanyahu government more broadly, makes no distinction about Palestinian groups, let alone the differently controlled entities in Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are conflated, an easy thing to do when there is no appetite, or intention among Israel’s political classes, for the establishment of any form of sovereign Palestinian state. Just as Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant claimed that Israel was “fighting against human animals” in Gaza following the Hamas attacks of October 7, we have Israel’s face of respectability at the UN stating the following: “The ambassadors know that the Palestinians are not ‘peace seekers’ but rather, supporters of terrorism.”
Those who label certain actions terroristic in nature often throw up the mirror to see an unpleasant reflection, even as they rage against it. The activities of Hamas on October 7 were bloodstained and traumatic; the sanguinary operations of Zionist paramilitary groups waged to create an Israeli state were not much better. Statehood’s creation is often concomitant with horrendous violence and a breach of conventions. “The annals of Zionist history,” writes S. Shamiri Hassan, “are full of leaders outdoing other leaders in insisting on the importance of military power and the role of force and terror in the building and safeguarding of the Zionist state: Joseph Trumpeldor, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Menahem Begin, Ben Gurion, and all the Israeli generals.”
The spectacle of the UN Charter vanishing as strips of paper in a shredder was inadvertently apt, given Israel’s own flouting of international law regarding Palestinian rights for decades, not to mention its current program of massacre, famine and displacement in Gaza. The fundamental lesson of May 10 for the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is that its iron grip on the fate of Palestinian statehood is proving increasingly precarious.
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