The United Nations General Assembly voted 143-9 to upgrade the status of Palestine as a non-member observer state, granting it all but voting rights with regard to all activities related to its plenum.
Argentina, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Palau, and the United States opposed the resolution.
Among those countries that supported the text were 13 European Union members, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, France, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.
Australia and New Zealand also supported the resolution, while Canada, Great Britain, and Ukraine abstained.There are already 143 countries that recognize Palestine as a state.
The UNGA vote, which is mostly symbolic, is viewed as an international referendum in support of unilateral Palestinian statehood.
Controversy over Palestinian recognition
Many Western and European countries have believed that full Palestinian statehood recognition and Palestinian UN membership should come at the end of a final status agreement that ends the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In light of Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel on October 7 that sparked the Gaza War, a number of Western countries have reconsidered their position.
Israel immediately attacked the decision, as a prize for terrorism. It also warned that such a step would harm negotiations for the release of the remaining 132 hostages held by Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza.
“The message that the UN is sending to our suffering region: violence pays off,” the Foreign Ministry stated.
“The decision to upgrade the status of Palestinians in the UN is a prize for Hamas terrorists after they committed the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and perpetrated the most heinous sexual crimes the world has seen,” it stated.
“The decision also provides a tailwind to Hamas amid negotiations for the release of the 132 hostages and humanitarian relief, further complicating the prospects for a deal,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry stated.
“Israel seeks peace, and peace will only be achieved through direct negotiation between the parties,” the Foreign Ministry said, as it thanked those countries that opposed the resolution, explaining that they stood “on the right side of history and morality.”
Foreign Minister Israel Katz posted on X that, “The political theater of the United Nations made an artificial, distorted and disconnected decision.”
The Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour told the assembly before the vote, “We want peace, we want freedom,” adding that 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.
Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan told the plenum, “As long as so many of you are ‘Jew-hating,’ you don’t really care that the Palestinians are not ‘peace-loving.”
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.
“Shame on you,” Erdan said.
Deputy US Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood told the General Assembly after the vote that unilateral measures at the UN and on the ground will not advance a two-state solution.
“Our vote does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood; we have been very clear that we support it and seek to advance it meaningfully. Instead, it is an acknowledgment that statehood will only come from a process that involves direct negotiations between the parties,” he said.
The resolution in support of Palestinian statehood stated that “Palestine is qualified for membership in the United Nations in accordance with article 4 of the Charter and should therefore be admitted to membership in the United Nations.”
The resolution affirmed “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to their independent State of Palestine.”
It called on the UN Security Council to grant the Palestinians membership in the UN. The approval of the 15-member UNSC is a necessary state for UN membership.
The Palestinians with the help of the United Arab Emirates, which authored Friday’s resolution, turned to the UNGA after the United States used its veto power in the UNSC to block Palestinian UN membership.
None of the UN member states have veto power in the UNGA where the Palestinians have an automatic majority.In 2012 the UNGA granted the Palestinians all the rights of a non-member observer state, in a vote that was approved 138-9. At the time Argentina supported the measure, Canada opposed it and Australia abstained.
Reuters contributed to this report.