Israel drops candidacy for UNSC seat amid low chances of winning
Israel withdrew on Friday from a race against Germany and Belgium for two seats on the United Nations Security Council in 2019-20.
A UN source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Israel had withdrawn because of its low chances of winning.
Israel’s mission at the UN had said it had “decided to postpone its candidacy for a seat on the Security Council” after consulting its partners, without providing a reason for the decision.
Earlier, the Palestinian Authority said that the Arab states would prevent Tel Aviv from obtaining enough votes to assume a seat at the council, RT reported.
“We are doing everything possible to convince as many countries as possible to block the vote on Israel’s bid for a seat at the Security Council,” Riyad al-maliki, foreign affairs minister of the Palestinian National Authority, said earlier.
The 15-nation Security Council has five permanent members and 10 elected ones with two-year terms.
The 193-member UN General Assembly is due to vote next month on five new members for a two-year term starting on Jan. 1, 2019. Israel, Germany and Belgium were competing for two seats allocated to the Western European and Others Group.
Germany and Belgium are now running uncontested, but they still need to win more than two-thirds of the overall General Assembly vote to be elected.
Regional groups generally agree upon the candidates to put forward and competitive races for seats are increasingly rare. Each year the General Assembly elects five new members.
Richard Grenell, who was sworn in as the US ambassador to Germany on Thursday, said in March that the United States had brokered a deal in the 1990s with countries in the UN’S Western European and Others Group to allow Israel to run uncontested for a seat.
Grenell, who was the US spokesman at the UN from 2001 to 2009, tweeted about the issue on March 14. “Israel has waited 19 years! The US must demand that Europe keep its word,” he said.
German diplomats denied any such agreement was made. The Israeli mission to the UN declined to comment at the time on Grenell’s tweet.
The council, on which the five permanent members – the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia – hold veto powers, is the only UN body that can make legally binding decisions, as well as imposing sanctions and authorizing the use of force.
To ensure geographical representation on the council, there are five seats for African and Asian states; one for Eastern European states; two for the Latin American and Caribbean states; and two for Western European and other states.
Indonesia and the Maldives are competing for one Asia-pacific seat in 2019-20, while South Africa and the Dominican Republic are running uncontested for the African and Latin American and Caribbean group seats.