What is the mechanism of Palestine’s full membership in the United Nations?
The meeting of the UN Security Council regarding Palestine’s full membership in this organization was held on April 15. In this session, 12 members of the Council voted in favor of Palestine’s membership, and it was the only American government that blocked the adoption of the membership resolution with its negative vote. This is although according to the standards of international law, including the right to self-determination, Palestinians can be present as a state in the international community and benefit from its facilities within the framework of the international rights and duties of governments.
The recognition of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination in international institutional arrangements
Since the 1970s, the right to self-determination has become one of the rules of human rights, and it is also referred to in the internal territory of countries in evaluating the legitimacy of governments. The right to self-determination is the right of all people to determine their political future and pursue economic, social, and cultural development freely. Self-determination is a fundamental right without which other rights cannot be fully realized; Self-determination is not just a principle, but the most important right in human rights and a prerequisite for the exercise of all individual rights and freedoms.
This right has individual and collective aspects in international law. The individual aspect was mentioned in Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and Articles 1 and 55 of the United Nations Charter also emphasized the collective aspect of this right. Therefore, what has given the Palestinian people the right to self-determination is that they are a nation.
The Palestinian people both believe that they belong to a single and independent nation and have common objective characteristics such as a specific history in a specific land with a distinct culture, at least since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. The Palestinians’ belonging to a single nation is reflected in the Palestinian National Charter in the form of Palestinian identity and the Palestinian Arab nation and they are Arab citizens. Palestinians belonging to an independent nation and having the right to self-determination has been formalized in the Covenant of the League of Nations and the resolutions of the General Assembly.
On November 29, 2012, the United Nations General Assembly, in Resolution 1967, with 138 votes in favor and 9 votes against, recognized Palestine de facto as a country and changed its status from a non-member supervisory body to a non-member supervisory government. However, the Palestinian territories were still under military occupation. Finally, on December 18, 2014, the General Assembly recognized the right to form an independent Palestinian state by passing a resolution with 180 votes in favor and asked all countries to continue their assistance for the faster implementation of the right to self-determination of these people. In another resolution on December 19 of the same year, it reaffirmed the permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people over the occupied Palestinian land, including East Jerusalem.
History of accepting the right of Palestinian self-determination by the Zionist regime
In addition to international procedures, the Zionist regime has also accepted the legitimate right of the Palestinian people to self-determination many times in the agreements regarding the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 1993, after the recognition of the Zionist regime by Yasser Arafat, the prime minister of this regime also recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. This position of Tel Aviv was repeated in the following years. In September 1993, under the Declaration of Principles for the Arrangement of the Interim Self-Governing Government, this entity was established as an elected council of the Palestinian people for a five-year transitional period in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Increasing the powers of the autonomous government in subsequent peace agreements, such as the Way River Agreement in 1998 and the Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum of Understanding in 1999, brought the international legal personality of the autonomous government. The subsequent developments in Palestine, especially the people’s resistance against the Zionist regime’s invasion of the Gaza Strip, also confirmed the same issue.
The process of accepting membership in the United Nations
Admission to the United Nations is done with the recommendation of the Security Council to the General Assembly and approval by the General Assembly. To check the membership of new members, the method of voting in the council is the qualitative majority, which has made the permanent members practically have the right to veto. Examining the history of the permanent members of the Council shows that the Soviet Union resorted to veto 47 times to prevent the membership of 16 countries. Accordingly, in the years 1951 to 1954, the United Nations faced a deadlock. This issue was raised by the General Assembly in the International Court of Justice on two occasions. The second advisory opinion in March 1950 states that the General Assembly cannot admit a government to membership unless the Security Council has accepted that government’s request for membership.
supporting the Zionist regime; The main benefit of America
In the meantime, the main benefit of the American foreign policy in the current period is the all-round support of the occupying regime and ignoring the demands of the Palestinians. After the veto of the Palestinian membership resolution, Robert Wood, the US Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, said: “The United States continues to strongly support the two-state solution. “This vote does not show opposition to the right to establish a Palestinian state, but it is an acknowledgment that this will only be achieved through direct negotiations between the parties.” The other meaning of this passage is that the Palestinians must accept the conditions of Washington and Tel Aviv, whether to form a government or to become a member of the United Nations. If we accept that the two-state solution was presented by the United Nations in 1974 and different American governments have accepted it at different times, the American action in vetoing the full membership of Palestine is nothing but a political action from the position of a great power, whose purpose is to accept conditions that America proposed in the deal of the century, including:
Israeli sovereignty over 30% of the West Bank, including the Jordan River
Disarming the Gaza Strip
Requiring Palestinians to recognize the Zionist regime as the Jewish state
Zionist settlements
They are considered part of the occupation regime’s soil
Security control of a large part of the West Bank and crossings by the Zionist forces
Palestinians do not have the right to have an army
Cancellation of all Zionist restrictions in the future and…
Result
The process of forming an independent state of Palestine has gone through various developments so far; Among other things, the UN General Assembly has de facto approved the formation of the Palestinian state. The priority of the Security Council and the need to go through the approval process of this council has become a strong barrier to the full membership of the Palestinian government in the United Nations. For many years, the Security Council has been considered more than a legal institution, a political institution, whose operation is based on the interests of the permanent members. The internal mechanism of the council, which is based on the qualitative majority, has made it a tool among the many tools of the United States to support the interests of the Zionist regime.