A U.S. envoy in Israel has warned that Washington will veto the Palestinians' U.N. bid for statehood and will cut aid if the Palestinian Authority pushes forward with its U.N. bid, isolating itself from many of its allies and from fellow U.N. Security Council members.
This just came across the wire from Haaretz:
The United States will stop all financial aid to the Palestinian Authority if they proceed with plans to ask the United Nations for recognition of an independent state in September, a U.S. official warned Friday.
U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem, Daniel Rubinstein, informed the PA's chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, that the U.S. would veto its attempts to become a U.N. member state in the Security Council, and warned that if the Palestinians attempted to go to the General Assembly for a nonbinding resolution, that funding would be cut by Congress.
The PA currently receives approximately $400 million annually from the United States.
According to information Haaretz received from Erekat's office, Rubinstein said:
"If the Palestinian Authority insists on going to the Security Council, the U.S. will use the veto," he told Erekat during a meeting in the West Bank city of Jericho, according to a statement issued by Erekat's office.
"And in case the Palestinian Authority seeks to upgrade its position at the UN through the General Assembly, the U.S. Congress will take punitive measures against it, including a cut in U.S. aid," he said.
Yesterday, China – one of the five permanent members on the U.N. Security Council – announced that it would support the PA's bid for U.N. membership in the UNSC, and so far none of the other permanent members (France, Russia, & the U.K.) have committed as to how they will vote. The E.U. has also not yet offered an official statement of its position, though some members, including Spain, have openly supported the Palestinian bid. France and the U.K. have made vague, contradictory statements in the past, and what these two countries plan to do is not yet clear. (One view is that, if the U.S. gives cover with a veto, they will likely abstain or vote in favor.)
The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) are the only ones which have veto power, and the U.S. has so far isolated itself as the only member which has decided to stand in the PA's way in its bid to achieve permanent member status in the U.N.
It has long been assumed that the U.S. would veto the move, and that the Palestinians would have to resort to a symbolic recognition of statehood through the General Assembly. Today's statement by Rubinstein appears to indicate that not only has this decision been concretized, but that the administration views efforts by Congress to cut PA funding as likely.
According to Haaretz, Erekat stated:
U.S. support for the Palestinian UN bid would actually enhance the two-state solution and peace in the Middle East.
He called on the U.S. to reconsider its position on the issue because "the right decision is to support Palestine's membership of the UN."
Erekat, who had also met with the European Union's representative to the Palestinian Authority, Christian Burger, also urged Europe to support Palestinian efforts to get full membership of the UN.
The European Union, he said, "should take the correct position, not the easy position."
Whether or not other countries in the UNSC will step forward and champion a veto of Palestinian statehood remains to be seen. What also remains is how the E.U. and member nations will vote in a General Assembly resolution.
However, as things stand, one thing is clear: the U.S. has isolated itself amongst its allies as being explicitly against the Palestinian's bid for statehood through the U.N.
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