The countries that voted against Palestine’s UN bid

Nine UN member states, including the US, voted against supporting Palestine’s bid for full membership in the world body.

Most of these countries also voted against Palestine being granted non-member observer state status in 2012.

The US, Israel’s strongest ally at the UN, had declared on Friday that it would vote against the resolution in the General Assembly.

Before the vote, Nate Evans, spokesman for the US mission to the UN, said Washington would be voting “no” on the resolution and encouraged other member states to do the same.

On April 18, the US vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have approved Palestine’s bid for full membership.

Israel has consistently voted against Palestine’s membership in the UN.

In 2012, it voted, along with the US, against it receiving observer status in the world body. Before Friday’s vote, Israel’s ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan fed a copy of the UN Charter into a shredder to illustrate what he said was the General Assembly’s disregard for the document.

The Czech Republic has historically been more pro-Israel and pro-US.

Its UN representative Jakub Kulhanek told the 193 member states after the vote on Friday that the people in the region deserve the prospect of a peaceful solution. Mr Kulhanek said that UN membership would not bring peace and prosperity to Palestinians and that it could only be secured at the negotiating table, where all parties will need to “make difficult political decisions and compromises”.

He encouraged the region to “embark on a path of co-operation including through the Abraham Accords”.

Along with the Czech Republic, Hungary is one of Israel’s closest allies in Europe.

In October, Hungary voted against a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.

Argentina has historically strong relations with both Israel and Arab countries, and it recognised the state of Palestine as “free and independent within the borders existing in 1967” in 2010.

President Javier Milei visited Israel in February and has pledged to move his nation’s embassy to Jerusalem, indicating a significant change in Buenos Aires’s foreign policy, after years of supporting Arab nations.

Mr Milei has also announced that his government will declare Hamas a proscribed terrorist group, noting that Argentinian citizens were among the hundreds of people taken hostage by the group on October 7.

The Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru and Palau, are four small Pacific island states that have historically aligned their votes closely with the US.

Richard Gowan, UN director for International Crisis Group, told The National this group of hard “no” voters is “mostly predictable”.

He said it was striking that several US allies, such as Australia, that might have not supported this resolution six months ago, opted to do so on Friday.

“I do think the prolonged war in Gaza has shifted the overall mood in the UN about the need to get to a two-state solution.”