PA: We're reconsidering US ties after it blocked our UN membership

• Published date: 20 April 2024
• Author: TOVAH LAZAROFF
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

"The Palestinian leadership will reconsider bilateral relations with the United States to ensure the protection of our people's interests, our cause, and our rights," PA President Mahmoud Abbas told WAFA, the Palestine News & Information Agency

A new strategy will be developed to "protect Palestinian national decisions independently and follow a Palestinian agenda rather than an American vision or regional agendas," Abbas said.

He spoke after the US cast the only no vote on a Security Council resolution to grant membership to the Palestinians. The United Kingdom and Switzerland abstained.

The resolution had the support of 12 of the UNSC members, including France. The US, however, is one of five UNSC members with veto power and its rejection of the resolution was enough to prevent its passage.

Tensions have been high between the US and the PA over Washington's strong support for the IDF's military operation to destroy Hamas in Gaza and its failure to unilaterally recognize Palestinian statehood.

Palestine statehood bid: UN dynamics

Some 139 UN member states recognize Palestine as a state, but Security Council approval is a necessary step for membership. Already in 2012 UN General Assembly recognized Pauline as a non-member state, a move which granted it de-facto recognition and allowed it to operate as a state within the UN, albeit one without full rights.

The PA pushed for full statehood recognition on Thursday, for the first time in 12 years, in a bid to maximize growing support among Western countries for unilateral Palestinian statehood in light of the Israel-Hamas war.

Although Hamas began the war with its invasion of Israel on October 7, killing over 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages, international public sympathy has been with the Palestinians in Gaza in light of the high fatality count of over 33,000. Israel has said that over 13,000 of those are combatants.

Abbas told WAFA that US policy stands "have generated unprecedented anger among the Palestinian people and the region's populations, potentially pushing the region towards further instability, chaos, and terrorism."

China's foreign minister Wang Yi on Saturday said, "A prompt admission of Palestine into the United Nations is a move to rectify a prolonged historical injustice," state media Xinhua quoted Wang as saying.

In Seoul on Friday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the Biden administration was committed to Palestinian statehood but believed it should be done through a peace...