Breaking: UN General Assembly Recognizes Palestine as ‘Non-Member State’
NPR has details: U.N. Votes to Give Palestinians ‘Non-Member Observer State’ Status.
Exactly 65 years after the General Assembly, convened at Lake Success, New York, voted to divide Palestine between a Jewish state and an Arab one, the same body voted 138 to 9 in favor of recognizing the State of Palestine.
The United States and Israel voted against the measure, while France and Spain voted in favor. Great Britain and Germany, both major powers and important U.S. allies, abstained from the vote.
As Mark reported earlier, this vote gives Palestinians the same status as the Vatican, but perhaps more importantly, it gives Palestinians access to other U.N. bodies like the International Criminal Court, where Palestinians could launch complaints against Israel.
The United States has repeatedly said that this was not the right way toward a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“This resolution is not going to take [Palestinian’s] closer to statehood,” Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman for the State Department, said in a briefing yesterday. “It does nothing to get them closer to statehood, and it may actually make the environment more difficult.”
The resolution reaffirms the “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to their independent State of Palestine,” and also declares the Palestine Liberation Organization the “representative of the Palestinian people.”