At the UN General Assembly, just before it adopted a resolution endorsing Palestine’s full membership, Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan tore up the UN charter in a show of extreme indignation.
Palestine is now an observer member of the UN; nevertheless, the UNGA on Friday passed a motion requesting that it be granted full membership. With 143 votes in favour of the resolution—including one from India—25 abstained, and nine countries—including the US and Israel—voted against it, the resolution was carried with overwhelming support.
“This day will be forever remembered. I want this moment and this horrible deed to live on forever in the minds of people everywhere. I want to hold up a mirror to you today so you can see exactly what damage this vote is doing to the UN Charter. He remarked, “You are tearing up the UN Charter with your own hands.” Additionally, referring to Hamas, he claimed that the resolution allows “modern day Nazis” to enter the UN.
“Today, you are also about to grant privileges and write to the future terror state of Hamas. You have opened up the United Nations for modern day Nazis, to the Hitler of our times…So here it is. I present to you the future outcome of today’s vote…the soon-to-be President, Yahya Sinwar, President tyrant of the State of Hamas, sponsored by the UN, and he owes his deepest gratitude to you, the General Assembly,” the Israeli envoy added while holding up an image of Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza.
“At the end of my speech, I tore the ‘UN Charter’ to pieces, to illustrate what the assembly is doing in its support for the entry of Palestinian terrorism into the UN,” Erdan later posted on X.
The resolution, proposed by the United Arab Emirates, asks the UN Security Council, which must decide whether to admit Palestine as a member, to “reconsider the matter favourably” and gives the Palestinian Authority additional rights in its existing status as a non-member observer state, according to CNN.
Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, also denounced the resolution’s passing, calling it a “absurd decision” that exposes “the structural bias of the UN” and validates Hamas’s October 7 acts, according to CNN.
“The message that the UN is sending to our suffering region: violence pays off,” he declared. “The decision to upgrade the status of Palestinians in the UN is a prize for Hamas terrorists after they committed the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.”
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy, announced that the Palestinian Authority will now ask the Security Council for full membership.
The US has already issued a warning, though, indicating that it is likely to block such a request at the Security Council—a reversal of its veto of a previous Palestinian membership bid from April.
A resolution proposing Palestine’s statehood was blocked by the US last month via the deployment of its veto power in the UN Security Council.
A draft resolution that would have advised the General Assembly to hold a vote with the wider UN membership to allow Palestine to join as a full UN Member State was not adopted by the UNSC in a vote of 12-1, with the US veto and two abstentions.
According to the UN document, the UNSC needs the support of at least nine countries and the veto power of none of its permanent members—China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US—in order for a draft resolution to be approved.