Palestine 194 is an ongoing diplomatic campaign by the Palestinian National Authority to gain membership in the United Nations for the State of Palestine. The name of the campaign is a reference to Palestine becoming the 194th member of the UN. The UN campaign is part of a strategy to gain international recognition of the State of Palestine, based on the borders prior to the Six-Day War, with East Jerusalem as its capital. The initiative developed during a two-year impasse in negotiations with Israel that followed the latter's refusal to freeze its settlement activities in the West Bank. The campaign was reported in the media as early as late 2009, and gained prominence during the leadup to the 66th Session of the General Assembly in September 2011. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas submitted the application to the Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 23 September 2011, which the Security Council has yet to vote on.
The campaign was formally backed by the Arab League in May 2011, and was officially confirmed by the Palestine Liberation Organization on 26 June 2011. The application was labelled by the Israeli government a unilateral step, while the Palestinian government argued it was essential to overcome the current impasse in negotiations. Several other countries, such as Germany and Canada, have also rejected the application and called for a prompt return to negotiations. Others, however, such as Norway and Russia, have endorsed the plan. The Secretary-General stated, "UN members are entitled whether to vote for or against the Palestinian statehood recognition at the UN."
With the failure to achieve a U.N. Security Council vote for membership, in September 2012, the Palestinian Authority submitted a draft General Assembly resolution to accord non-member observer state status to Palestine, which the General Assembly passed on 29 November 2012.
Background
On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly approved a partition plan to provide for the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the partition of its lands into Arab and Jewish independent states. The partition was rejected by the Arab Palestinians and the Arab League. The expiration of the mandate on 15 May 1948 saw the declaration of the State of Israel and the subsequent invasion of the former mandate territories by neighbouring Arab states. The ensuing Arab–Israeli War, which saw the end of hostilities in 1949 following a series of armistice agreements between belligerents states, resulted in demarcation of the Gaza Strip to Egypt, the West Bank to Jordan, the Golan Heights to Syrian and the rest to Israel. Further change came in June 1967 when Israel won the Six-Day War and occupied the territory previously gained by the Arab states.
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was accorded observer status within the United Nations on 22 November 1974, having been recognised as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The State of Palestine was proclaimed on 15 November 1988 in Algiers at an extraordinary session in exile of the Palestine National Council, citing the partition plan of 1947 as legal justification. In acknowledgement of the declaration, the United Nations upgraded the observer seat of the PLO and accorded it the designation "Palestine", without explicitly referring to it as a state.
At the Security Council in 1989, the PLO representative acknowledged that 94 member states—at that time a majority—had recognised the new Palestinian state. It subsequently attempted to gain membership as a state in several agencies connected to the United Nations, but its efforts were thwarted by threats from the United States to withhold funding from any organisation that admitted Palestine, and laws which were enacted in order to make such a reaction automatic.The laws originated in and ; for further details see committee discussions at: . The text of the House and Senate resolutions were subsequently put into the following laws: (which produced ), , and finally (which produced ). See also: Consequently, applications and letters of accession to various treaties were either withdrawn or deferred indefinitely. As a consequence, in November 1989, the Arab League proposed a General Assembly resolution to formally recognise the PLO as the government of an independent Palestinian state. The draft, however, was abandoned when the U.S. again threatened to cut off its financing for the United Nations should the vote go ahead. The Arab states agreed not to press the resolution, but demanded that the U.S. promise not to threaten the United Nations with financial sanctions again.
The PLO subsequently committed itself to peace negotiations with Israel brokered by the international community. These began with the Madrid Conference in 1991, and resulted in the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, leading to the creation of the Palestinian National Authority. In 2002, a Quartet of third-party brokers developed a road map for peace aimed at achieving a viable solution to the conflict including the establishment of a Palestinian state. The current outline for a solution was determined and agreed to by both parties during the Annapolis Conference of 2007.
Israel was admitted as a member of the United Nations in May 1949, on its third application. The final resolution approved its admission on the conditions that it implement the 1947 partition plan and Resolution 194 of December 1948, which called for the return of refugees.
Causes The push for a statehood resolution at the United Nations is seen as a result of growing frustration among Palestinians over the lack of progress in negotiations, and over the continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. In 2008, The New York Times reported that, "Even among the most moderate Palestinians, the credo of a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is beginning to erode". Scholar Abdallah Schleifer described "a sense among Palestinians of almost desperation, that they are being left behind, that the focus for the achievement of a Palestinian two-state solution, a Palestinian state living alongside an Israeli state based on negotiations, has collapsed." In August 2008, the Palestine Strategy Group, composed of government officials, researchers and advisers, published a new strategic position recommending that the leadership transfer the conflict to the United Nations.
One of the common misgivings amongst Palestinians about the negotiation process is the inability of the PLO to negotiate with Israel as an equal. The PLO has therefore said that global recognition of the Palestinian state is an opportunity to formally level the playing field and create a situation in which two state partners can negotiate as equals.
In 2009, the government of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad developed a state-building programme aimed at establishing viable institutions capable of providing effective governance despite the occupation. The agenda was published in August and gave a deadline of two years for the establishment of an independent and viable Palestinian state. The plan was backed by the European Union, which provided financial and practical assistance to its development. Also in 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a speech in which he became the first U.S. president to endorse the 1967 borders as the basis for a Palestinian state. He brokered direct negotiations between Israel and Palestine the following year, and at the General Assembly session in September 2010, he set a one-year deadline for these negotiations to produce an independent, sovereign state of Palestine admitted as a member. Negotiations broke down the following month, however, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to extend his government's moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank, prompting the Palestinians to disengage. President Mahmoud Abbas labelled these settlements as unilateral actions aimed at imposing "facts on the ground" and as "the primary obstacle to any peace process".
Towards the end of 2010, the World Bank released a report that found the PNA "well-positioned to establish a state" at any point in the near future. The report highlighted, however, that unless private-sector growth in the economy was stimulated, a Palestinian state would remain donor dependent. In December, the EU acknowledged the progress made in the state-building programme, and several member states agreed to grant diplomatic status to the Palestinian representations in their capitals. In April 2011, the UN's co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process issued a report on the progress made in this area, describing "aspects of its administration as sufficient for an independent state". It echoed a similar assessment published the week prior by the International Monetary Fund.
In July 2011, the PLO published a paper stating that its quest for international recognition of the State of Palestine is aimed at protecting the viability of the two-state solution, and that it is not intended as a substitute for negotiations. It claimed that recognition "strengthens the possibility of reaching a just and lasting peace based on the terms of reference accepted by the international community as the basis for resolving the conflict." Furthermore, it stated:
Another factor that has led to the movement is the Arab Spring. Schleifer said of President Abbas, "He's very self-conscious I think of the overall atmosphere of change in the Arab world, which dramatises the lack of accomplishment in terms of achieving a Palestinian state through negotiations".
Campaign
Diplomatic efforts to gain support for the bid gained momentum following a succession of endorsements from South America in early 2011. High-level delegations led by Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Abed Rabbo, Riyad al-Maliki, Saeb Erekat, Nabil Shaath and Riyad Mansour paid visits to many states. Palestinian ambassadors, assisted by those of other Arab states, were charged with enlisting the support of the governments to which they were accredited. During the lead-up to the vote, Russia, Spain and China have publicly pledged support for the Palestinian bid, as have inter-governmental organisations such as the African Union, and the Non-Aligned Movement. Samir Awad, a professor of politics at Birzeit University in the West Bank, explaining the near-total stalling of the initiative seven months later, said Abbas failed to "follow through" as a result of US pressure: "He did not want to burn his bridges with the Americans."
Counter-measures Israeli measures to counter the initiative also increased, and Germany, Italy, Canada and the U.S. announced publicly they would vote against the resolution. Israeli and U.S. diplomats began a campaign pressuring many countries to oppose or abstain from the vote. However, because of the "automatic majority" enjoyed by the Palestinians in the General Assembly, the Netanyahu administration has stated that it does not expect to prevent a resolution from passing should it go ahead. In August, Haaretz quoted the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, as stating that Israel stood no chance of altering the outcome of a resolution at the General Assembly by September. "The maximum that we can hope to gain is for a group of states who will abstain or be absent during the vote", wrote Prosor. "Only a few countries will vote against the Palestinian initiative."