US VETOES WIDELY SUPPORTED PALESTINIAN BID FOR FULL UN MEMBERSHIP

Fri 19 April 2024:

The US has vetoed a draft resolution that would have recommended to the 193-member UN General Assembly that “the State of Palestine be admitted to membership of the United Nations”.

Britain and Switzerland abstained, while the remaining 12 council members voted yes.

US deputy ambassador to the UN speaks after the vote

Robert Wood says the United States “has worked vigorously and with determination to support Palestinian statehood in the context of a comprehensive peace agreement that would permanently resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”.

“Since the attacks of October 7, President Biden has been clear that sustainable peace in the region can only be achieved through a two-state solution with Israel’s security guarantee,” he said after he raised his hand to vote against and veto the resolution supporting full membership for Palestine at the UN.

“There is no other path that guarantees Israel’s security and future as a democratic Jewish state,” Wood continued.

He said that “there are unresolved questions as to whether the applicant meets the criteria to be considered a state”.

“We have long called on the Palestinian Authority to undertake necessary reforms to help establish the attributes of readiness for statehood and note that Hamas, a terrorist organisation, is currently exerting power and influence in Gaza, an integral part of the state envisioned in this resolution,” he said.

‘Unfair, unethical and unjustified’: Palestine responds to US veto

The Palestinian presidency has condemned the US veto of the Security Council resolution that recommended full UN membership for a Palestinian state.

The presidency said in a statement the US veto was “unfair, unethical and unjustified”.

Russia slams US for rejecting Palestine’s bid for full UN membership

Russia’s ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia has spoken in favour of granting Palestine full membership to the Security Council, saying “an absolute majority of the global community” also supports it.

By exercising its veto, the US has demonstrated “what they really think of the Palestinians”, Nebenzia told the UNSC.

Washington thinks “they do not deserve to have their own state”, and it only realises “the interest of Israel”, he said.

Nebenzia said the US is turning a blind eye to the “crimes of Israel” against civilians in Gaza, as well as the continuation of the illegal settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.

“The aim is to break the Palestinians’s will, to force them once and for all to submit to the occupying power, to turn them into servants and second-class persons, and perhaps, to once and for all force them out of their native territory,” he said.

However, he said, “that policy is only having an opposite impact”.

US showing it’s ‘my way or the highway’ with UNSC veto

Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara says that, once again, the US’s veto demonstrated a policy of “it’s my way or the highway”.

“Palestine could only be a country the way the United States sees it, or Israel sees it, only at the time that it’s suitable to the United States and within the geopolitics and the global interest of the United States,” Bishara said.

The US is therefore sacrificing the “freedom of Palestinian people for egotistical and narrow interests of the United States and Israel”, he said.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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