Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Britain and France Will Abtain on Statehood Bid

A United Nations diplomat said that Britain, France and Colombia have decided to abstain during a vote on the Palestinian bid for statehood recognition by the UN Security Council.

The vote on the matter is expected to be held next week.

Neither Britain, France nor Colombia have officially announced their positions on the matter. The diplomat told the BBC that the decision was made during discussions at the UN Security Council.

The United States has already said that it would veto the Palestinian UN membership bid. However, abstentions or opposition from additional countries would harm the Palestinians’ efforts to receive wider European support.

The UN diplomat said that Germany has made known that it will not support the Palestinian bid, without saying whether it would abstain or vote against it.

Britain and France support the establishment of a Palestinian state but they oppose the UN statehood bid because they believe it may hurt efforts to restart peace negotiations with Israel.

On Thursday, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said that the Palestinians will not accept anything less than full UN membership and do not want an upgrade to an observer state.

Malki told journalists in Ramallah the Palestinians could have won observer state status long ago and were not interested in it now. They currently hold the status of observer entity.

For more, go to Haaretz.com

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.