Security Council scheduled to vote on Palestinian UN membership

The UN Security Council is scheduled to vote today on a Palestinian request for full UN membership, diplomats said, a move that Israel ally the US is expected to block because it would effectively recognise a Palestinian state.

The 15-member council is due to vote at 3pm (9pm SA time) on a draft resolution that recommends to the 193-member UN General Assembly that “the State of Palestine be admitted to membership of the

UN”, diplomats said.

A council resolution needs at least nine votes in favour and no vetoes by the US, Britain, France, Russia or China to pass.

Diplomats say it could have the support of up to 13 council members, which would force the US to use its veto.

Council member Algeria, which put forward the draft resolution, had requested a vote for yesterday to coincide with a Security Council meeting on the Middle East.

The US has said that establishing an independent Palestinian state should happen through direct negotiations between the parties and not at the UN.

“We do not see that doing a resolution in the Security Council will necessarily get us to a place where we can find ... a two-state solution moving forward,” US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said on Wednesday.

The Palestinians are currently a non-member observer state, a de facto recognition of statehood that was granted by the 193-member UN General Assembly in 2012.

But an application to become a full UN member needs to be approved by the Security Council and then at least twothirds of the General Assembly.

The UN Security Council has long endorsed a vision of two states — Israel and Palestine — living side by side within secure and recognised borders.

Palestinians want a state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, all territory captured by Israel in 1967.

Little progress has been made on achieving Palestinian statehood since the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the early 1990s.

The Palestinian Authority, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank and is Israel’s partner to the Oslo Accords.

Hamas in 2007 ousted the Palestinian Authority from power in the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian push for full UN membership comes six months into a war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and as Israel is expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Israel’s UN ambassador Gilad Erdan on Wednesday accused the Security Council of “investing its time in promoting the establishment of a Palestinian terrorist state”.

“If the Security Council decides to recommend full membership for the Palestinian Authority, which incites and finances terrorism and has no control over its territory, it will lose all legitimacy,” Erdan said.

A Security Council committee on the admission of new members — made up of all 15 council members — met twice last week to discuss the Palestinian application and agreed to a report on Tuesday.

“Regarding the issue of whether the application met all the criteria for membership ... the committee was unable to make a unanimous recommendation to the Security Council,” the report said.

UN membership is open to “peace-loving states” that accept the obligations in the founding UN Charter and are able and willing to carry them out.