Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Engel Lobbies American States To Oppose Palestinian Statehood

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the senior Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives Western Hemisphere subcommittee, is lobbying countries to vote against Palestinian statehood recognition in the United Nations.

“I am contacting as many countries as I can speak with to tell them the U.N. resolution is destructive and awful and will not make peace, it will make peace talks more difficult,” Engel told JTA this week.

Engel had just returned from a trip to Israel with top officials from the Caribbean island nations of Grenada and Saint Kitts and Nevis. The officials met there with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

Engel, who chaired the Western Hemisphere subcommittee from 2007-2011, has cultivated a number of the region’s leaders.

Israel has said that the Palestinian Authority effort to secure statehood recognition would set back the prospect for renewed peace talks.

The Obama administration has pledged to veto a statehood recognition resolution should it come to the Security Council. The Palestinians may also seek enhanced status short of statehood through the U.N. General Assembly, which began meeting in its 66th session on Tuesday.

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.