Palestinian UN membership bid set to fail

Palestine will most probably not gain support from the required 9 out of 15 Security Council members Ramallah - Agencies The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) on Tuesday endorsed a decision by President Mahmoud Abbas to request a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) vote on a resolution recognising a Palestinian state, even though it is apparently destined to fail. The endorsement came at a meeting in Ramallah of the PLO executive committee, the highest Palestinian authority, which set aside the alternative of asking the UN General Assembly to upgrade Palestine’s U.N. status short of full membership. It did not say when a Council vote would be requested. “The Executive committee stresses the necessity to continue working with the Security Council to pursue the cause of achieving the full membership of Palestine,” an official statement said, according to Reuters. It backed Abbas’s decision not to go to the General Assembly at this stage, while keeping all options open. Abbas is seeking statehood for Palestinians without waiting any longer for a breakthrough in negotiations with Israel on a peace treaty to end the 63-year-old Middle East conflict. The Palestinians say they have been patient for 20 years of futile talks. But Israel and its main ally the United States have warned Abbas that only a peace treaty can establish a universally recognized Palestinian state. The issue has split the Security Council. Diplomats say Russia, China, Lebanon, Brazil, India, South Africa and probably Gabon and Nigeria would support the Palestinians. The United States would vote against and Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Colombia and Bosnia would likely abstain, with Germany possibly voting against. The makeup of the Council will be different in the New Year, when five seats change hands. “Our strategy now is to continue knocking on the door of the Security Council and not other doors,” Foreign Minister Reyad al-Malki told Voice of Palestine radio on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The United Nations currently considers Palestine an observer “entity.” Abbas applied on September 23rd for full UN membership for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. He passed up the less ambitious but more promising option of asking the General Assembly to upgrade Palestine to an observer “non-member state” like the Vatican. U.S. President Barack Obama warned he would veto a Security Council resolution backing Palestinian statehood. But no U.S. veto will in fact be necessary when it comes to a vote, because Abbas lacks support from at least 9 of the 15 Security Council members needed to pass a resolution and force Obama’s hand. Middle East peace talks have been suspended for more than a year. Abbas refuses to negotiate while Israel goes on building settlements on occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem land, and Israel refuses to halt its settlement construction. Israel’s government said Tuesday it will invite tenders for the construction of more than 800 new homes in east Jerusalem, in a move to punish the Palestinians for joining UNESCO, AFP reported. The housing ministry said it had published formal notice of its intention to invite tenders to build 749 housing units in Har Homa and another 65 in Pisgat Zeev, both settlement neighborhoods in occupied and annexed east Jerusalem. “Israel responded to Quartet attempts to re-launch the negotiations and meetings yesterday with a new settlement building declaration in east Jerusalem,” chief negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP. “Quartet attempts to create an atmosphere suitable to relaunch negotiations and convince Israel to stop building in settlements have failed,” he said. On Nov. 1, Israel’s inner cabinet decided to speed up the construction of 2,000 homes for Jews in Arab east Jerusalem and in other nearby settlements to punish the Palestinians for successfully joining UNESCO a day earlier. Abbas’ drive for recognition regardless of the peace process scored a victory two weeks ago, when 103 states at the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO voted to upgrade the Palestinians to full membership status. The UNESCO success is costing the Palestinian Authority about $100 million per month in lost revenues, following Israel’s decision to freeze transfer of the tax revenues and customs duties it collects on its behalf. Israel occupied the eastern sector of the Holy City during the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it in a move which was never recognized by the international community. Since then, Israel has insisted that the whole of Jerusalem is its “eternal, indivisible capital” and does not consider construction in the east to be settlement building because the land falls within the city’s municipal boundaries, which were drawn up after the 1967 war. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state and adamantly oppose any Israeli attempt to extend its control over the sector.