{"id":9143,"date":"2013-02-07T14:58:30","date_gmt":"2013-02-07T14:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kohelet.org.il\/article\/unga-resolution-6719-palestinian-observer-state-status\/"},"modified":"2013-02-07T14:58:30","modified_gmt":"2013-02-07T14:58:30","slug":"unga-resolution-6719-palestinian-observer-state-status","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/unga-resolution-6719-palestinian-observer-state-status\/","title":{"rendered":"UNGA Resolution 6719-Palestinian observer state status"},"content":{"rendered":"The status of \u201cPalestine\u201d at the United Nations following General Assembly Resolution 67\/19.\n\nOn November 29,2012 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted Resolution 67\/19 concerning the \u201cStatus of Palestine in the United Nations\u201d. 138 UN member states voted in favour of the Resolution, 9 voted against (including the United States, Canada, the Czech Republic, and Israel) and 41 abstained. As a result, Palestinian designation at the UN has shifted from an observer \u201centity\u201d to that of an \u201cobserver state\u201d.\n\nWhat does General Assembly Resolution 67\/19 actually say? Despite being three and a half pages long, Resolution 67\/19 contains only three brief clauses that could be considered substantive in any real sense.\n\nFirst, and by far the most significant among the three, is the decision \u201cto accord Palestine non-member observer State status in the United Nations…\u201d\nSecond is a call to \u201call States and the specialized agencies and organizations\u201d of the UN to \u201csupport and assist the Palestinian people\u2026\u201d; an urging meant to encourage the further inclusion of \u201cPalestine\u201d in various UN programs.\nAnd third, the Resolution expresses \u201cthe hope that the Security Council will consider favourably\u2026\u201d the application made in September 2011 by Mahmoud Abbas to have \u201cPalestine\u201d admitted as a full member State of the UN \u2013 a bid that has so far failed without the need for one of the five permanent members of the Security Council to exercise its veto power to quash the move. Still, in an effort to ensure the issue remains firmly on the UN\u2019s agenda, Resolution 67\/19 \u201crequests\u201d that the Secretary-General \u201ctake the necessary means to implement the resolution and to report to the General Assembly within three months on progress made…\u201d\n\nEqually significant is what Resolution 67\/19 does not say. It does not formally declare the establishment of a Palestinian state, neither has the Palestinian leadership opted to do so at this time \u2013 preferring to refer to Arafat\u2019s 1988 declaration of statehood. Resolution 67\/19 also refrained from enumerating any expanded rights of participation for the Palestinians in the UN system, and at the same time it maintains \u201cthe privileges and role\u201d of the PLO in the UN as the \u201crepresentative of the Palestinian people\u2026\u201d. It also makes no mention of the Palestinian Authority.\n\nThe text of the Resolution is also rather confusing regarding the question of whether a Palestinian State already exists or whether it is an aspiration. This is undoubtedly a deliberate case of ambiguous drafting, as the Palestinians and their supporters at the UN attempt to establish simultaneously both that \u201cPalestine\u201d already exists and that it is an aspiration the realization of which depends not on the Palestinians but on the international community. The confusion here is compounded by the fact that several of the states that voted in favour of the Resolution emphasized that Palestinian statehood could only be achieved through peace negotiations with Israel, a position clearly implying that \u201cPalestine\u201d does not amount to a State at this time.\n\nWhat are the implications of the Resolution? Had \u201cPalestine\u201d become a member of the UN (a manoeuvre attempted and thus far failed) its membership would have been widely interpreted as implicit confirmation of it being a \u201cState\u201d. But this did not happen and is unlikely to happen as long as one or more permanent members of the Security Council oppose such a development.\n\nWhereas UN membership implicitly confirms the statehood of an entity, the same cannot be said of a \u201cnon-member observer state\u201d. The latter status is not envisaged in the UN Charter at all, but has evolved through sporadic practice involving a handful of cases. Given the virtual universality of UN memberships for actual states, the fact that the Palestinian entity was not admitted provides a strong argument for it not qualifying as a State. And historically the status of non-member observer states has been granted to entities \u2013 such as South Vietnam \u2013 whose status at the time was at least unsettled.\n\nFurthermore, the preamble of Resolution 67\/19 \u201creaffirms\u201d that 132 UN members had recognized \u201cPalestine\u201d as a State in the past. Would a an addition of six implicit, ambiguous recognitions subsumed in the present Resolution somehow shove the Palestinian entity over the minimal threshold of recognitions necessary to constitute Palestinian statehood? Hardly, even if we were to accept the controversial theory that it is recognition \u2013 not the de facto fulfilment of the criteria for statehood codified in the 1933 Montevideo Convention \u2013 that creates new states.\n\n