The latest Palestinian attempt at establishing full UN membership was in May 2024, when the American alternate ambassador at the time, Robert Wood, vetoed it. He tells the Sun his position has not changed.
United Nations headquarters, September 28, 2019. AP/Jennifer Peltz, file
In a move bound to further fray Turtle Bay’s relations with its largest financial backer, America, the Palestinian Authority is officially fielding a candidacy to preside over the United Nations General Assembly next year.
The current leader of the Arab group at the UN, Jordan, has written a letter to the ambassador of Fiji in which it asks member states to support the candidacy of the Palestinian UN observer to be the next General Assembly president.
Jordan has “the honor to convey the decision of the Arab Group to present the candidature of H.E. Minister Riyad Mansour, the Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, for the position of President of the 81 United Nations General Assembly” for 2026-27, the March 25 letter reads. The letter was first made public by the website Devex.
The Jordanian Mission requested the Fijian to distribute the letter to all 193 members of the UN. As the letter notes, though, Mr. Mansour does not represent any of those 193 members. In UN parlance, he is an ambassador of the “observer state of Palestine.”
Last year the General Assembly voted to allow the Palestinian ambassador to speak during its sessions and be seated among other member states. That was a slight upgrade in the status of the Palestinian ambassador. Yet, to become a full-fledged UN member, he needs the approval of the 15-member Security Council, where five countries, including America, hold permanent seats and can veto any resolution.
The latest Palestinian attempt at establishing full UN membership was in May 2024, when the American alternate ambassador at the time, Robert Wood, vetoed it. He argued that a Palestinian state could only be established in an agreement between Ramallah and Jerusalem.
“We said that it’s still the case that your full membership in the UN will be dependent on an agreement reached between you, the Palestinians and Israel,” Mr. Wood tells the Sun. “And they know this. They didn’t believe that we would veto the resolution. I vetoed it, so why go to that?”
The Palestinian Authority has long seen its Turtle Bay perch as a springboard toward building world legitimacy. Its UN position also allowed Ramallah to join such organizations as the International Criminal Court, using it for lawfare against Israelis.
At the same time, President Abbas’s popularity among Palestinians has been sinking. Time and again he has postponed long-promised elections as pollsters predict landslide victories by Hamas. The October 7, 2023, massacre has raised Hamas’s popularity even further, making any two state-solution seem ever more distant.
If Mr. Mansour becomes president of the UN General Assembly, “it may look good on the streets of Ramallah and in Gaza,” Mr. Wood says, “but at the end of the day, they’re not going to achieve anything.” If Ramallah considers yet another UN maneuver as a “necessary building block for them in terms of statehood, I wouldn’t count on that building block being part of the foundation.”
Meanwhile, if Mr. Mansour becomes General Assembly president, America, which is already at odds with the UN on several fronts, might find an additional reason to doubt the world body’s utility. The Biden and Trump administrations have already defunded the top agency aiding Palestinians after its officials were shown to have Hamas ties.
“My sense,” Mr. Wood says, is “it’s going to come to a head between this administration and the UN on a range of issues.” He is concerned that too wide a rift would leave the arena at Turtle Bay to Russia and Communist China. The Palestinians might support such a development.