Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas formally applied for statehood recognition at the United Nations.
Abbas handed his application to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Friday morning, shortly ahead of his planned speech to the General Assembly.
The request will go to the Security Council, where it requires a nine-vote majority to pass. However, any of the five permanent Security Council nations can veto it, and the United States has vowed to exercise its veto.
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In that case, Abbas has said, he will take his case to the General Assembly, where he will ask for enhanced status.
Shortly after handing in his application, Abbas outlined a vision for an independent Palestine that hewed to the two-state formula but also revived rhetoric that hearkened back to an era of Palestinian belligerence.
“We agree to establish the state of Palestine on only 22 percent of historical Palestine on all of the territories of Palestine occupied by Israel in 1967,” he told the General Assembly in his speech. “Our efforts are not aimed at isolating Israel or delegitimizing it, we only aim to delegitimize the settlement activity.”
Abbas’ emphatic endorsement of two states for two people, and his repeated calls for peaceful support from Palestinians who were watching him were signals that he was still committed to the two-state solution.
“I do not believe anyone of conscience can reject our application for full membership in the United Nations and our admission as a member state,” he said.
But Abbas also reserved harsh rhetoric for the Israelis, accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” targeting Palestinian civilians for assassination, strengthening its “racist annexation wall,” and carrying out excavations that threaten Islamic holy places.
Abbas repeatedly invoked 63 years of “Nakba,” or catastrophe, and repeated his commitment to unity with Hamas, a terrorist group committed to Israel’s destruction. He made reference to Muslim and Christian ties to the holy land-the site of Mohammed’s ascension to the heavens and Jesus’ birth-but omitted any reference to Jewish claims.
While Abbas called for a timeline for peace negotiations culminating in statehood-but did not set one out himself. That, and his commitment to prior agreements with Israel, seemed to be aimed at assuaging Israeli and U.S. concerns that he would follow up the application with unilateral actions. Israel and the United States have emphatically opposed the statehood recognition bid.
But if Abbas’ bottom line was aimed at pushing back against charges that he was acting unilaterally, his rhetoric was bound to raise hackles-and seemingly did, given the walkouts by at least two members of the Israeli delegations, Cabinet ministers Avigdor Lieberman and Yuli Edelstein, and the reaction of Susan Rice, the U..S. envoy, who refused to applaud.
Abbas also invoked, to vigorous applause, his predecessor Yasser Arafat’s 1974 appearance before the same body.
He cited Arafat’s raising of an olive branch on that occasion, saying it was still held out-but did not mention the gun Arafat wore, against U.N. regulations and at his insistence. That pistol disgusted the United States and Israel at the time, and for years helped define Arafat in the West not as a man of peace, but as a bloody-minded posturer.
The The Jewish Federations of North America issued a statement following Abbas’ bid. Issued by Kathy Manning, the JFNA chair, and Jerry Silverman, the organization’s president and CEO, it read: “The decision by President Abbas to seek a unilateral declaration by the United Nations threatens both the stability of the Middle East and the progress of the peace process. Instead of acting unilaterally, Abbas should heed the invitation of Prime Minister Netanyahu to return immediately to the negotiating table with haste and without precondition. To that end, the Jewish Federations’ Israel Action Network has mobilized the North America Jewish community by collecting over 100,000 signatures in support of bilateral negotiations. It is our firm belief that the goal of two democratic nations, living side-by-side in peace, can only be achieved by Israelis and Palestinians communicating directly, rather than by engaging in diplomatic tactics that simply serve to move the region further away from attaining real peace.”