UNSC to decide this month on Palestinian bid for full United Nations status; US expected to veto

The United Nations Security Council says it would decide this month on the Palestinians’ bid for full UN membership, with the long shot campaign unlikely to survive US opposition.

As the Gaza war, sparked by Hamas’s October 7 massacre, rages on into its seventh month, the council’s move is described as “historic” by the Palestinians, but angrily denounced by Israel.

Maltese Ambassador Vanessa Frazier, who holds the rotating presidency of the council, says that “the council has decided that this deliberation has to take place during the month of April.”

Any request to become a UN member state must first pass through the Security Council — where the United States wields a veto — and then be endorsed by the General Assembly.

The Palestinians, who have had observer status at the world body since 2012, have lobbied for years to gain full membership, which would amount to recognition of Palestinian statehood.

“Today is a historic moment,” Palestinian Authority UN envoy Riyad Mansour tells reporters Monday as the Security Council members, through an ad hoc committee on new membership, start the review process after the Palestinians last week relaunched their formal 2011 bid.

“All we ask for is to take our rightful place among the community of nations, to be treated as equals — equals to other nations and states, to live in freedom and dignity, in peace and security, in our ancestral land,” Mansour says in the General Assembly.

Washington maintains the UN is not the place for hashing out Palestinian statehood, which it stresses should be the result of an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.