US to Council Members: Abstain on Palestine Bid

 The United States is pushing hard to avoid a showdown next Friday in New York, where the Security Council is scheduled to announce a decision on Palestine’s application for full UN membership.

Although the United States has repeatedly said it would block any attempt to pass the resolution, the Obama administration wants to avoid using its veto and is asking other Council members to abstain from voting. A US veto of the Palestinian bid would be a significant blow to US standing in the Arab world.

Obama reportedly sent Bosnia Herzegovina leaders a letter this week asking them not to support the Palestinian request.

Palestinian leaders would need at least 9 votes in favor of the resolution from the Council’s 15 members to force a US veto. China, Russia, Lebanon, Brazil, India and South Africa have all said they would support Palestinian membership.

A UN diplomat has told the BBC that France, Colombia and the United Kingdom have already let the Security Council know they would abstain from voting, while Germany has indicated it would not support the Palestinian request, without saying if it would abstain or vote no.

The US would need two of the remaining four members; Bosnia,Portugal, Nigeria and Gabon, to abstain or vote no in order to avoid having to use its veto.

On Monday UN member states overwhelmingly voted to accept Palestine into UNESCO, forcing the US to cut off all of its funding to the organization. Current American law calls for the defunding of any UN organization that  accepts Palestine in its membership.

 Israel has responded to Palestine ascension to UNESCO by announcing it would speed up settlement construction in the West Bank and Jerusalem and stop payment of of the tax revenue it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinian  envoy at the United Nations Riyad Mansour condemned Israel’s response and said he would ask the Security Council to intervene. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and officials at the US state department have both said they are concerned by Israel’s decisions.

The Obama administration used its first and so far only veto at the Security Council in February, when it was the lone Council member to oppose a resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction.

UNESCO Recognizes Palestine, Loses US Funding

Palestine today gained membership in UNESCO, a move that will likely bolster the Palestinian Authority’s bid for full membership in the United Nations but also put an end to American funding of the organization. 

Current American law calls for the defunding of any UN entity that grants Palestinians membership. 

Members of the agency, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, voted to admit Palestine despite attempts by the Obama administration to convince the international community to oppose it. The vote was 107 members in favor, 14 against and 52 abstentions

 “We sincerely regret that the strenuous and well-intentioned efforts of many delegations to avoid this result fell short” David Killion US Ambassador to UNESCO said after the vote.

State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland told reporters today the US would withhold 60 million dollars from UNESCO in 2011.

Palestinian admission to UNESCO comes weeks after the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved a bill to drastically change the way the US funds the United Nations and its agencies. 

Committee Chairman and bill sponsor Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), one of Israel’s strongest supporters in Congress, has repeatedly called on President Obama to counter Palestinian efforts at the United Nations by withholding funding. 

“Today’s reckless action by UNESCO is anti-Israel and anti-peace. It rewards the Palestinian leadership’s dangerous scheme to bypass negotiations with Israel and seek recognition of a self-declared ‘Palestinian state,’ and takes us further from peace in the Middle East.This is only the beginning. The Palestinians will now seek full membership in other UN bodies.” Ros Lehtinen said in a statement released earlier today.

“Existing U.S. law mandates that we cut off funding to any UN body that approves such a request. The Administration must stop trying to find ways not to fully implement this law, and instead cut off funding to UNESCO immediately. And Congress must pass pending UN reform legislation to cut off funding to any UN entity that grants any upgraded status to ‘Palestine.’ “ 

 Palestine’s request for full membership at the United Nations was presented to Secretary General Ban Ki Moon during the UN General Assembly in September and is in the process of being reviewed by a special UN Security Council committee. The committee is expected to report back to Council members on November 11th.

Palestinian Request for UN Membership Starts Long Process

Just a week after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas presented his bid for full membership in the United Nations, a committee of the Security Council met Friday to consider the request.

The committee on the admission of Palestine, made up of all 15 members of the Security Council, agreed to meet again next week at the expert level to discuss the technical details of the application. It is expected to report back to the Council on its work in two weeks.

Palestine’s envoy to the UN Riyad Mansour told reporters afterwards the Council had established the legal arguments for Palestine’s membership and that he now expected the process to move forwards without delay.

“We hope that the experts will deal with the application in a short period of time so that the next President of the Security Council, Nigeria next month, will be able to report to the Security Council about the work of the committee of experts.”

Palestinian UN Bid Moving One Small Step at a Time

The UN Security Council today agreed to refer Palestinian application for UN membership to a special committee which will begin examining its request Friday.

Council members met briefly this morning to make the announcement, the first step in a process that could likely take weeks, or longer, before any final decision. 

The Palestinian Authority’s Envoy at the UN, Riyad Mansour, told reporters he was pleased Security Council members had started the initial process preparing for deliberation over Palestine’s admission request .

” As you see, the process is moving forward step by step, and we hope that the Security Council will shoulder its responsibility and approve our application…” he told reporters outside the Security Council. 

 The Palestinian Authority would need 9 of the Security Council’s 15 members to vote in favor of the resolution, with no votes against coming from the security body’s five veto-wielding permanent members.(China, Russia, France, UK, US)

American officials have already indicated they would veto a resolution on Palestinian UN membership should it come before the Security Council, although it remains unclear if the the Palestinian Authority has secured the necessary 9 votes of support from other members of the Council. 

The Palestinian envoy also condemned the Israeli government’s decision yesterday to approve the construction of over 1000 housing units in East Jerusalem, calling it “provocative”, “illegal” and evidence the Netanyahu government has no regard for the international community’s peace plan. 

Mansour said the move was “a clear answer by the Israeli government to the Quartet, to negotiations and to the refusal of abiding by the global consensus on the fact that settlements are legal obstacle to peace and they need to be stopped.”

“This speaks clearly that Israel is not interested in negotiating with us, in spite of the fact they say they like to do so. Their action speaks louder than what they say verbally.” he added.

The Palestinian President and Israeli Prime Minister butted heads over the issue of settlements in their speeches last week to the General Assembly, with Mahmoud Abbas arguing that continued expansion was preventing the resumption of negotiations and Benjamin Netanyahu charging back that it was the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, not settlements, that had ended talks. 

The UN and the large majority of international community consider settlement activity to be illegal. The Obama administration’s official position is that they are illegitimate and an impedement to the peace process. 

Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor dismissed Mansour’s accusations over the latest settlement expansion, arguing that Jerusalem was the capital of the Jewish people, but also conceding that Israeli officials would be open to negotiations on the matter.  

“Every thing is on the table, everything is negotiable. I hear the Palestinians using every pretext in order to find a reason not to go into negotiations. All we want… is for both sides to sit down and negotiate everything, nothing is off the table.” he told reporters outside the Security Council. “We’ve started a process, and the process at the end of the day should be between Palestinians and Israelis talking about everything without any preconditions, in Jerusalem and in Ramallah.” 

The Middle East Quartet -Russia, United States, European Union and United Nations- issued a statement last week after Abbas filed the Palestinian request for UN membership, appealing to both sides to urgently return to negotiations and respect their obligations under the Middle East Roadmap. 

The Quartet statement also outlines timeline for the possible resumption of negotiations and calls on both parties to submit proposals on territory and security within the next three months.

Both Mansour and Prosor said their governments were in the process of reviewing the Quartet statement and expected official responses by the end of the week.