“We lost Europe,” was the way one Foreign Ministry official put Thursday morning when Germany announced it would abstain on Palestinian non-member observer state status, rather than vote against it. Indeed, twelve European Union member states elected to abstain altogether — including the United Kingdom, Poland, and the Netherlands — while fourteen voted in favor,…
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has broken ranks with official policy by saying that he sees “no reason to oppose” the Palestinian bid for UN recognition. Olmert says that the General Assembly decision, expected on Thursday, “lays the foundation for the idea” of a two-state solution. “I believe that the Palestinian request…is congruent with…
The United Nations is likely to hold a debate on whether to upgrade the Palestinians’ U.N. status to a sovereign country in mid-November – after the U.S. election, the president of the 193-member U.N. General Assembly said on Wednesday. Having failed last year to win recognition of full statehood at the United Nations, Palestinian President…
Mahmoud Abbas announced Saturday that the Palestinian Authority has decided to seek United Nations recognition as a non-member state. This will happen, said the Palestinian president, despite United States pressure opposing the move. Abbas, who spoke to reporters Saturday afternoon in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said the PA intends to submit the request…
A second bid by the Palestinian Authority to have the United Nations recognize Palestinian statehood appears to be a case of “once more, but with less feeling.” The P.A., which provoked a furor in Israel last September when it pushed unsuccessfully for recognition as a state by the Security Council, will go to the body’s…
Apparently, all it took was a speech. After Barack Obama’s address to the United Nations last week, in which he spent approximately two minutes telling the Israeli narrative in a way that satisfied certain Jewish ears (and, of course, opposing Palestinian statehood), he is suddenly in the good graces of the Israeli population for really…
A Palestinian living in France has written a song that has arguably become the anthem for the upcoming Palestinians bid for statehood in the United Nations later on this week, according to a Ma’an report. The songwriter, Ahmed Dari, who worked for the United Nations’ Educational, Social and Cultural Organization until recently, composed “Mestani Dawla…
The Palestinians will be going to the United Nations this September to seek recognition of statehood. Despite the desire of Israel and the United States to avert what many are describing as a disastrous move, a U.N. vote now looks inevitable. As Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority, recently put it, “We have exhausted…
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