U.S. Vetoes Palestinian Bid for Recognition as Full U.N. Member State

Published April 18, 2024Updated April 23, 2024

The United States blocked the U.N. Security Council on Thursday from moving forward on a Palestinian bid to be recognized as a full member state at the United Nations, quashing an effort by Palestinian allies to get the world body to back the effort.

The vote was 12 in favor of the resolution and one — the United States — opposed, with abstentions from Britain and Switzerland.

The Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, had described the bid for full-member status as an effort "to take our rightful place among the community of nations."

After the vote, Mr. Mansour, visibly upset, delivered a passionate address asserting the Palestinian people's right to self-determination.

"Our right to self determination is a natural right — a historical right — to live in our homeland Palestine as an independent state that is free and that is sovereign," he said.

Israel's foreign minister, Israel Katz, said after the vote: "The shameful proposal was rejected. Terrorism will not be rewarded."

The Security Council has consistently called for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a result that has failed to materialize during negotiations between the two sides. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in Tokyo on Friday morning that the new resolution would not have brought a two-state solution closer.

"The resolution provides for the Palestinian Authority to be a member of the U.N.," Ms. Thomas-Greenfield told reporters. "Right now, the Palestinians don't have control over a significant portion of what is supposed to be their state. It's being controlled by a terrorist organization," she said, referring to Hamas.

The United States, along with the four other permanent members of the Council, can veto any action before it. On Thursday afternoon, during a high-profile Council meeting to address issues in the Middle East, including the Palestinian bid for full U.N. membership, the United States, a staunch ally of Israel's, wielded that veto.

The resolution had asked the 15-member Security Council to recommend to the 193-member U.N. General Assembly that "the State of Palestine be admitted to membership of the United Nations," diplomats said. To pass, the application needed to be approved by the Security Council with at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, Britain, France, Russia or China. Then, at least two-thirds of the General Assembly would have had to approve it.

Full Palestinian membership in the U.N. would be an important if largely symbolic victory for the Palestinian Authority, which has long sought a nation-state. Had the Palestinian application been accepted, the new status would have brought the privileges of U.N. membership, including voting rights and a rotating seat on the Security Council.

Many of the most critical issues regarding a Palestinian state, however, would not have been resolved, including physical borders and recognition by individual countries with which it would have needed to establish diplomatic relations.

Israel was admitted as a full U.N. member in 1949. The Palestinian Authority has been seeking a state made up of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip for decades; those territories have all been captured or annexed by Israel.

Little progress has been made on achieving Palestinian statehood since Israel and the Palestinian Authority signed the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, which established a peace process aimed at a two-state solution. In 2007, Hamas drove the Palestinian Authority, which President Mahmoud Abbas leads and which exercises limited self-rule in the occupied West Bank, from power in the Gaza Strip.

Complicating the Palestinian application for statehood is the war that began when Hamas led terrorist attacks on Israel on Oct. 7 that killed about 1,200 people and prompted Israel's retaliatory attacks in Gaza, which have killed more than 33,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and displaced more than one million people. The conflict has spilled into the occupied West Bank and neighboring countries like Lebanon and has drawn Iran into the fray.

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The statehood push also comes as Israel expands settlements in the West Bank.

The Palestinians asserted statehood in 1988 with a declaration of independence. In 2012, the General Assembly voted to upgrade their status from "observer" to "nonmember observer state."

The push for Palestinian statehood has picked up momentum around the world, with politicians in countries like France, Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and Sweden signaling their support to formally recognize a Palestinian state as a way to try to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict. As of April 2022, 138 countries and the Holy See have recognized the State of Palestine.

There are two ways to become a full member state at the United Nations. One can apply to the Security Council and the membership committee will consider it. A Council member can also introduce a resolution on membership for a vote.

The Palestinian Authority applied to upgrade its status in the United Nations in September 2011, but it dropped the bid less than two months later because of a lack of support and pressure from the United States, which said it would veto any application.

After Mr. Abbas revived the bid this year, the Biden administration sought to persuade him to shelve it, according to Axios and The Times of Israel. But Mr. Abbas rebuffed those efforts, the reports said.

"All we ask for is to take our rightful place among the community of nations — to be treated as equals, equals to other nations and states, to live in freedom and dignity, in peace and security in our ancestral land," said Mr. Mansour, the Palestinian envoy to the United Nations.

"Recognition of the State of Palestine and its membership are not enough by themselves to end this illegal occupation," he added. "But they are the first step towards this urgent and long-overdue goal."

The Council's committee on the admission of new members met twice last week to discuss the Palestinians' application, but it could not reach a unanimous decision. Under Council guidelines that allow a member to introduce a resolution for a vote, Algeria, the Council's only Arab member, put forward the Palestinian application.

Algeria's foreign minister, Ahmed Ataf, said on Thursday that statehood "is a historic right which has not been implemented, and the lack of implementation of this right is the cause of the prolongation of this Arab-Israeli conflict."

During the Council meeting on Thursday, a representative of the Palestinian Authority, Ziad Abu Amr, asked, "How could granting the State of Palestine full membership at the United Nations, similar to other countries around the world, how could this damage the prospect of peace between Palestinians and Israelis?"

He added, "This resolution will grant hope to the Palestinian people, hope for a decent life in an independent Palestinian state."

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In his speech on Thursday, Mr. Abu Amr, of the Palestinian Authority, pointed out that Israel itself had been established through a U.N. resolution, not through negotiations. He was referring to Resolution 181, which called for a Palestine state to be partitioned into a Jewish state and an Arab state. It was passed by the General Assembly in 1947.

But Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, on Thursday denounced the resolution that went before the Security Council as a "prize for terror." He added, "The only thing that forced, unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state will do is to make any future negotiations almost impossible."

China was one of the countries that voted in favor of the proposal, and its ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, said he found the U.S. veto "most disappointing."

The vote was supposed to take place on Friday, but Algeria and the Arab Group of nations wanted it on Thursday during a scheduled session on the Middle East conflict attended by many foreign ministers from regional countries, including Iran and Turkey.

Reporting was contributed by Anushka Patil, Farnaz Fassihi, Richard Pérez-Peña, Michael Levenson and Motoko Rich. Jack Begg contributed research.

A correction was made on 

April 23, 2024

: 

An earlier version of this article misstated the year that the U.N. General Assembly voted to upgrade Palestine to a nonmember observer state. It was 2012, not 1988.

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