Palestinians Headed for UN Flag Victory
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
The Palestinian Authority’s draft resolution for raising its flag at the U.N. headquarters will easily pass a vote by the world body’s general assembly, diplomats said.
Israel and the United States oppose the Palestinian Authority’s bid to have its flag at the United Nations headquarters in New York, but diplomats serving there told the Agence France-Presse news agency that the Palestinian draft resolution on the matter will easily pass at the 193-member voting forum when it brought up on Sept. 10, AFP reported Friday.
Ahead of a U.N. General Assembly vote, Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Ron Prosor, wrote a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Sam Kutesa, the General Assembly’s president, to block the move, which would break with the U.N. practice of flying only the flags of member states.
The Palestinian move was an attempt to “score easy and meaningless points” Prosor wrote, adding that this was “not the path to statehood, this is not the way for peace,” AFP reported.
The Palestinian observer mission to the United Nations on Wednesday appealed to the world body’s member states to support its call to be allowed to fly its flag at U.N. headquarters as a “non-member observer state” – a status that the Palestinian Authority obtained in 2012 following a general assembly vote.
“We … respectfully appeal to the member states of the General Assembly to support the draft resolution on the raising of the flags of the non-member observer states,” the Palestinian mission’s statement said.
The U.S. State Department on Tuesday described the Palestinian flag initiative as “counterproductive.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to visit the U.N. headquarters on Sept. 30.
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