French
German
Hebrew
Noruegan
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Polish
Portuguese
After having failed to obtain full UN membership for a Palestinian state at the UN Security Council in 2011, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) announced during his UN address on September 27, 2012 that he would seek to have the UN General Assembly adopt a resolution defining the Palestine Observer Mission as a non-member state. This is likely to occur during the second half of November 2012. By seeking to enhance the international status of the Palestinian Authority in the UN General Assembly, rather than in the UN Security Council, Abbas understood that he would not face the threat of a US veto, though he still would not acquire the formal status of a member state of the United Nations.
The Palestinians have sought to enhance their international status using the UN General Assembly for many years. Originally, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was accepted by the UN as an observer back in 1974. The UN had other non-state observers like the Arab League, the Islamic Conference, and the Organization of African States. There have been observers like the Holy See (the Vatican) that were non-member states.1 The UN also used this kind of representation for movements that were not strictly states under international law but might evolve in this direction like the Southwest African Peoples’ Organization (SWAPO) which was granted observer status in 1976.
By 1988, the UN General Assembly decided that the PLO Observer Mission should henceforth be called “Palestine,” but it carefully stipulated that this change in nomenclature would be executed without prejudice to the “status and functions” of the PLO within the UN system. In short, despite its new designation, the PLO Observer mission did not represent a state. Presently, Abbas hopes to get the UN General Assembly to adopt a resolution which will establish that the Palestinian Authority, created as a result of the Oslo Agreements between Israel and the PLO, can be regarded as a state.
Read Full Report in PDF:
http://www.friendsofisraelinitiative.org/uploads/papers/pdf/FOI_Paper11.pdf
