In this letter addressed to the UN Secretary General and transmitted to the Security Council, Riyad Mansour announces, “at the request of the Palestinian leaders”, to relaunch this request dating from 2011 and calls on the Council to examine it “in April 2024” .
The ambassador has continued to repeat in recent months that faced with the large-scale Israeli offensive in Gaza, in retaliation for the unprecedented Hamas attack of October 7, one of the priorities of the Palestinians was to become a member full membership of the United Nations.
A sustained aspiration, in a letter also sent Tuesday to the Security Council, in particular by representatives of the group of Arab countries and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
Observer status
“We would like to bring to your attention that to date, 140 member states recognize the State of Palestine,” they insist in this letter seen by AFP, considering the 2011 request as still pending.
In September 2011, the President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas launched the procedure requesting “the accession of the State of Palestine to the UN”. This procedure never came to an end and the Palestinians finally obtained , by the vote of a resolution of the General Assembly in November 2012, observer status.
According to the Charter of the United Nations, the admission of a State is made by decision of the General Assembly, by a two-thirds majority, but only after a positive recommendation to this effect from the Security Council.
Observers doubt that the Palestinians’ request could thus reach the Assembly, highlighting the risk of a veto by the United States in the Security Council.
This article is originally published on lematin.ch