The United Nations Security Council Decision Not to Become a Two-State Member State: Israel’s Destroying Lives in the West Bank and East Jerusalem
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.
Israel was admitted as a full member of the United Nations in 1949. The territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem have all been captured or annexed by Israel as part of a larger plan to create a state for the Palestinians.
The plight of the Palestinian people began over a century ago, said the Palestinian representative to the UN during Thursday’s debate. “We made unimaginable historic concessions in order to achieve a peace based on the two-state solution, and we had every possible effort made to achieve that.”
The resolution would pass if there are no vetoes from any of the five permanent members of the council.
Robert Wood, the deputy ambassador to the UN, said that the principles had not changed before the vote. “It’s about, what do you think is the best way to get toward a two-state solution? And our view is that having this vote right now does not do that.”
“We will continue direct diplomacy as well as a political horizon towards a two-state solution so that Palestinian and Israeli citizens can live side by side in peace,” he said. We are committed to achieving steps that will lead to a two-state solution.
The Security Council’s decision to consider the Palestinian application was criticized by Israel’s ambassador to the UN, who spoke fieryly during the debate.
The resolution would have “zero positive impact for any party,” Erdan said. It will destroy the planet for years to come and harm any chance for future dialogue.
“Failure to make progress towards a two-State solution will only increase volatility and risk for hundreds of millions of people across the region, who will continue to live under the constant threat of violence.”
In the six months since Oct. 7, the day that Hamas led an assault on Israel that left about 1,200 people dead, Israel’s military campaign on Gaza has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians, many of whom are women or children, Palestinian health officials say, and damaged or destroyed a majority of buildings in the territory.
International perspectives on the conflict have changed in the wake of Israel’s destructive campaign. In the U.S., where support for Israel was once widespread among both political parties, young people are increasingly more sympathetic to Palestinians. U.K. and France are some of the long-time Israel allies that have signaled their willingness to support Palestinian statehood.
With the conflict threatening to boil over beyond the borders of Israel and the Palestinian territories, the Middle East is on a “knife-edge,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday.
Last weekend, tensions between Iran and Israel rose to a new level when Iran launched an unprecedented attack on Israel in revenge for the strike on the Iranian consulate in Syria.
“Recent escalations make it even more important to support good-faith efforts to find lasting peace between Israel and a fully independent, viable and sovereign Palestinian state,” Guterres said at the Security Council debate.
“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.
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. In Washington, a spokesman for the State Department, Vedant Patel, said the new resolution was dead on arrival.
The most expeditious way for the Palestinians to attain statehood is through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Authority with the assistance of the United States and other partners, as per the U.S. view.
Many of the most critical issues regarding the new status, however, would not be resolved, including physical borders and recognition by individual countries with which it would need to establish diplomatic relations.
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, the militant group 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.