Abbas Seeks To Resubmit Statehood Bid to U.N. Security Council
Image by Getty Images
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Sunday he was discussing with Jordan plans to resubmit to the United Nations Security Council a resolution calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state that failed to win enough votes last week.
Jordan remains a member of the Security Council while several other countries with revolving membership were replaced over the New Year.
The Palestinians hope these states will be more sympathetic to their resolution demanding an Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories and independence by 2017, although the veto-wielding United States would be all but certain to vote ‘No’ again, as it did on Dec. 30.
“We didn’t fail, the U.N. Security Council failed us. We’ll go again to the Security Council, why not? Perhaps after a week,” Abbas told officials at a cultural conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the Palestinian seat of self-rule government.
“We are studying it, and we will study this with our allies and especially Jordan … to submit the resolution again, a third time or even a fourth time.”
In the U.N. vote on Tuesday, the Palestinian draft received eight votes in favor, including France, Russia and China, two against and five abstentions, among them Britain. Australia joined the United States in voting against the measure.
But any resubmission would face almost certain failure. The U.S. has veto power as one of the council’s five permanent members and has pledged to block Abbas’s plan, calling it one-sided and unproductive.
Abbas signed onto 20 international conventions the next day, including the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, giving the court jurisdiction over crimes committed on Palestinian lands and opening up an unprecedented confrontation between the veteran peace negotiator and Israel.
In retaliation for the move to the ICC, Israel announced on Saturday that it would withhold 500 million shekels ($125 million) in monthly tax funds that it collects on the Palestinians’ behalf, in a blow to Abbas’s cash-strapped government.
“Now there are sanctions – that’s fine. There’s an escalation – that’s fine … but we’re pushing forward,” Abbas said.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news the rest of 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Membership Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
