Israel-Hamas war: What happened on day 216?

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) is expected to upgrade the Palestinian status at the UN, granting it almost all statehood rights within its plenum short of allowing it to vote.

The United Arab Emirates is expected to submit a resolution, a draft text of which was seen by The Jerusalem Post, calling on the United Nations Security Council to grant Palestine full membership status in the UN.

The text, which is likely to have majority support, states 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 Palestinian Authority, through the UAE, turned to the General Assembly after the United States vetoed its membership application to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) last month. The US is one of five permanent UNSC members with veto power.

The UAE resolution “recommends” that the Security Council “reconsider the matter favorably,” but in essence, its text seeks to circumvent the UNSC's sole power to determine UN membership.

Excerpt from the draft of the UNGA resolution expected to be passed on Friday. (credit: Courtesy)

UNGA resolutions, however, cannot be vetoed, and the PA has automatic majority support in the UNGA, where some 140 of its members already independently recognize Palestine as a state.

The UNGA does not have the formal power to grant Palestinians UN membership, but it can provide them with de-facto recognition that allows them to operate as a state within the UN system.

In 2012, the UNGA voted 138-9 to grant the Palestinians the status of a non-member observer state. This move allows them to participate in UN forums and sign many of its statutes and treaties, including the Rome State, which governs the International Criminal Court.

Not statehood, but similar status

According to the current draft of the resolution, this Friday, the UNGA would grant Palestine the right to operate within its plenum as a member state, granting it almost everything but the right to vote, which would need UNSC approval.

The resolution affirms “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to their independent State of Palestine.”

In practice, the State of Palestine could be seated among the member states and be granted broad rights to address the plenum on its behalf or that of groups.

The Palestinians could submit resolutions, proposals, and amendments on their own behalf or on behalf of groups within the UN system.

If the resolution is approved, the Palestinians could also participate in high-level meetings and international conferences, where they would have voting rights.

Western states, especially the United States, have opposed unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood, believing that it should be granted upon completion of a final status peace agreement for the two states.

Given that negotiations for a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been frozen for a decade and in light of the Gaza war, there is growing support among Western states for unilateral Palestinian statehood.

Israel’s government has opposed Palestinian statehood, but in stating unilateral Palestinian statehood, it agreed that such statehood should only be achieved through a negotiated process.

It has argued that Palestinian recognition, in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on southern Israel in which over 1,200 people were killed and another 252 seized as hostages, was a reward for terror.

“Recognizing a Palestinian State after October 7 means rewarding Hamas for murdering over 1,000 Israelis,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a post on X on Wednesday.

Recognizing a Palestinian State after October 7 means rewarding Hamas for murdering over 1,000 Israelis.

It means giving a prize to the Iranian Regime.

It means living with the possibility of another October 7.

The only way to promote peace is through direct… pic.twitter.com/DFRQiX91Vm

— ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) May 8, 2024

“It means giving a prize to the Iranian Regime. It means living with the possibility of another October 7.

“The only way to promote peace is through direct negotiations within the framework of a regional normalization process,” he said.

Hamas has remained steadfast to its position towards a truce proposal and stuck to its approval of it, a member of Hamas' political bureau, Izzat El-Reshiq, said in a statement on Thursday.

Reshiq's comments came as Cairo hosted new ceasefire talks attended by delegations from Hamas, Israel, the United States and Qatar in an attempt to conclude a deal.

US President Joe Biden warned Israel - for the first time — that he’d halt US weapons shipments earmarked for Gaza if the IDF embarks on a major military operation against Hamas in Rafah.

“I’ve made it clear that if they [Israel] go into Rafah… I’m not supplying the weapons that have historically been used to deal with Rafah,” Biden told CNN while campaigning in Wisconsin for re-election in November.

Earlier in the day US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told the Senate Appropriations Committee the US had already paused one shipment to Israel of payload munitions due to concerns over Rafah. 

“We’ve held up one shipment,” Biden explained to CNN.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they [Israel] go after population centers” in Gaza, Biden stressed to CNN.

US President Joe Biden (left) and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) (credit: FLASH90)

Securing Israeli security while denying munitions

He underscored the US commitment to Israel’s security pointing to the unprecedented maneuver last month, in which the armies of America, Jordan, Great Britain, France, and Israel worked together to defend the Jewish state from an Iranian drone and missile attack.

“We going to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks like [the one that] came out in the Middle East recently.”

“We’re not walking away from Israel’s security. We’ve walked away from its ability to wake war in those areas [Rafah],” he stated.

Biden said that what Israel has done so far in Rafah does not constitute a major military operation in that southern part of the enclave.

What the IDF has done in Rafah, he said, has created problems with neighboring Egypt, he explained.

The US has argued, already since November, that Israel has done enough to protect Palestinian civilians in Gaza.  For months, officials across Biden's administration at the State Department and Pentagon have held meetings and phone calls pleading with their Israeli counterparts to take a more targeted approach in Gaza.

It has been particularly opposed to a Rafah operation, which the US fears would create a humanitarian catastrophe because over 1.3 million Palestinians are located in that area, many of whom fled there in the early stages of the war to escape bombing in the north. 

Biden told CNN that he opposed the violent nature of the protests on US campuses against the Gaza war, particularly the manner in which it targets Jewish students.

“There's a legitimate right to free speech and protest,” Biden said, adding that the students, “have a right to do that.” He stressed, however, that “there's not a legitimate right to use hate speech” or to “threaten Jewish students” or block their access to class.

“That's against the law. It's against the law” he said. 

He described those actions as antisemitic and deplored its occurrence seven decades after the Holocaust. 

Everyone has forgotten October 7, Biden said, as he referred to the Hamas attack against Israel in which over 1,200 people were killed and another 252 kidnapped.

He recalled one horrific story from that day in which Palestinian terrorists had roped a mother and daughter together and set them on fire. 

Biden said that in response he had visited Israel in October and even then had warned it not to make the same mistakes the US had made in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Al Qaeda attack on the Twin Towers in New York.

“We want to get [Osama] bin Laden and we'll help you [Hamas leader Yahya[ Sinwar. It made sense to go get Bin Laden, but it made no sense to try to unify Afghanistan,” he stressed.

Biden spoke of the importance of focusing on the day after the Gaza war when Hamas would no longer control the enclave but offered no suggestion as to how to oust Hamas from the enclave.

“We got to think through what is happening after Gaza after this is over.. I’ve been working with Arab states I won't mention them because I don't want to get them in trouble. 

“But five leaders are prepared to help rebuild Gaza prepared to help transition it to a two-state solution.. to maintain the security and peace while they're working [the establishment of a] Palestinian Authority is real and not corrupt."

The IDF is attacking Hamas targets in the central Gaza Strip, according to an IDF press statement early on Thursday morning.

This is a developing story.

Israel struck targets south of Damascus in the early hours of Thursday morning, according to Syrian reports cited by Israeli media.

Syrian air defense systems were reportedly activated.