Will Mahmoud Abbas Lead the Palestinians Back to the United Nations?

Will Mahmoud Abbas Lead the Palestinians Back to the United Nations?

On Friday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that he would seek non-member status for Palestine at the United Nations if peace talks with Israel do not resume. “If we don’t return to the (peace) negotiations, we’ll of course go to the General Assembly to obtain the status of non-member state, as is the case for the Vatican,” Abbas said. Similarly, presidential secretary Tayyeb Abdul Rahim recently said that "at the right time" the Palestinian leadership will "take our case back to the international body, which was responsible for it when it decided to partition Palestine in 1947 and ask it to shoulder its responsibility for this issue."

Abbas’ statements took place following a meeting with France’s newly elected president, Francois Hollande. Hollande himself said that “Today, we must do everything to facilitate the recognition of a Palestinian state via a negotiated process.” Since those statements, Abbas has said that he is not sure if going  before or after U.S. elections is the right time.

Additionally, in a recent interview with the Saudi Okaz newspaper, Saeb Erekat said that the United States has threatened to cut off aid and close down the PLO mission in DC if the Palestinians go to the UN to upgrade their status. 

Chatter regarding a new Palestinian UN gambit has been ongoing for the past few months. In late March, Saeb Erekat said that an agreement had been reached with Qatar to return to the United Nations. A month later Abbas, while in Tunisia, said that “If you do not see any progress with the peace process, we will go to the United Nations.” In mid-May, an anonymous Palestinian official toldXinhua that the Palestinians were preparing to resume their statehood bid via the United Nations. 

In late May, Abbas, in an interview with the Lebanese daily An-Nahhar, once again threatened to go the UN if no progress was made with the peace process. Around the same time, one of Abbas’ advisors, Nimer Hammad, said that if the peace process did not start soon the Palestinians would head back to the UN.

In addition to all of this, on Friday, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, was elected to be one of the 21 Vice-Presidents of the General Assembly starting in September. Prosor is the third Israeli (Dan Gillerman and Abba Eban) to hold the position. While the position is fairly symbolic, it does hold some responsibilities including “running General Assembly discussions in the president's absence, and [being] a member of the committee that decides on the assembly's daily agenda.”

Update: The Times of Israel reports:

The Palestinian Authority is continuing its unilateral bid for UN recognition as negotiations with Israel are “nonexistent,” a senior Palestinian negotiator said Monday.Saeb Erekat, head of the Palestinian negotiations department, said the PA is currently attempting to garner the support of UN geopolitical regional groups for recognition of Palestine as a nonmember state in the UN, a status enjoyed today only by the Vatican. The PA has been defined as a “permanent observer” in the UN since 1974. 

Erekat told the London-based daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi that the status upgrade would turn Palestine into “a state on the 1967 lines, with east Jerusalem as its capital,” adding that the Palestinian state would then be recognized as “a state under occupation.”

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