UN assembly votes to back Palestine's membership
The United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly backed a Palestinian bid to become a full UN member by recognising it as qualified to join and recommending the UN Security Council "reconsider the matter favourably." The vote by the 193-member General Assembly was a global survey of support for the Palestinian bid to become a full UN member – a move that would effectively recognize a Palestinian state – after the United States vetoed it in the UN Security Council last month. The assembly adopted a resolution with 143 votes in favor and nine against – including the US and Israel – while 25 countries abstained. It does not give the Palestinians full UN membership, but simply recognises them as qualified to join. The resolution "determines that the State of Palestine ... should therefore be admitted to membership" and it "recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter favorably." The Palestinian push for full UN membership comes seven months into a war between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and as Israel is expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank, which the UN considers to be illegal. "We want peace, we want freedom," Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour told the assembly before the vote. "A yes vote is a vote for Palestinian existence, it is not against any state. ... It is an investment in peace." "Voting yes is the right thing to do," he said in remarks that drew applause. Under the founding UN Charter, membership is open to peace-loving states that accept the obligations in that document and are able and willing to carry them out. "As long as so many of you are 'Jew-hating,' you don't really care that the Palestinians are not 'peace-loving'," UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan, who spoke after Mansour, told his fellow diplomats. He accused the assembly of shredding the UN Charter – as he used a small shredder to destroy a copy of the Charter while at the lectern. An application to become a full UN member first needs to be approved by the 15-member Security Council and then the General Assembly. If the measure is again voted on by the council it is likely to face the same fate: a US veto. (Reuters)