Palestine may seek UN General Assembly help

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein on Rohingya crisis DUBAI: The Palestinian leadership may turn to the United Nations General Assembly if Washington vetoes a draft UN Security Council resolution to reaffirm Jerusalem’s status as unresolved, after President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise it as Israel’s capital.

The Palestinian UN envoy raised this option in remarks published in Saudi daily Arab News yesterday, ahead of a Security Council vote on an Egyptian-drafted resolution about Jerusalem’s status that the US States was expected to veto.

The draft said any “decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded”.

Arab News quoted Ambassador Riyad Mansour as saying that Palestinians and Egyptians had worked closely with Security Council members while drafting the resolution to ensure that it got overwhelming support.

“The Europeans in particular asked us to avoid terms like ‘denounce’ and ‘condemn’, and not to mention the US by name,” it quoted Mansour as saying.

“We acceded to their request, but kept the active clauses rejecting all changes to Jerusalem and the reaffirmation of previous decisions.”

Palestinians have the option of invoking a rarely-used article of the UN Charter that calls for parties to a dispute not to cast a veto, Arab News said, but they were more likely to take the issue to the General Assembly under Resolution 377A, known as the “Uniting for Peace” resolution. Reuters