The US has vetoed a Palestinian request to the United Nations Security Council for full UN membership, blocking the world body’s recognition of a Palestinian state.
The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 12 in favor, the US against and two abstentions, Britain and Switzerland.
US officials had hoped that Washington could avoid using its veto if other states objected to a draft resolution before the council recommended that the “State of Palestine be admitted to membership of the United Nations.”
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Before the vote, diplomats said the U.S. mission had tried to convince one or two other council members to abstain to ease Washington’s isolation on the issue, but U.S. officials said they were resigned to repeating the American veto had to be exercised in support of the elections. Israel.
Washington’s position is that the emergence of a Palestinian state should be the result of negotiations on all aspects of a Middle East peace settlement.
“We fully believe in the two-state solution and a state for the Palestinian people. We believe the best and most sustainable way to do that is through direct negotiations between the parties,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday.
The Palestinian presidency condemned the US veto as “unfair, unethical and unjustified”.
Explaining the British abstention, British envoy to the UN Barbara Woodward said: “We believe that such recognition of Palestinian statehood should come neither at the beginning of a new process nor at the very end of it. a new process. the process.”
Woodward added: “We must start solving the immediate crisis in Gaza.”
Palestinians currently have non-member observer status, granted by the UN General Assembly in 2012. An application to become a full member with voting rights would have to be approved by the Security Council and two-thirds of the General Assembly.
“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,” António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, told the council.
“The failure to make progress toward a two-state solution will only increase volatility and risk for hundreds of millions of people in the region, who will continue to live under the constant threat of violence,” he said.
Guterres also said that Israel’s commitment to improving aid access to the Gaza Strip has had little or no impact.
“Apparent progress in one area is often offset by delays and limitations elsewhere,” the Secretary-General said.
“For example, although Israeli authorities have approved more aid convoys, these approvals are often granted when it is too late in the day to make deliveries and return safely,” he explained. “The impact is therefore limited, and sometimes nil.”
