After Trump Jerusalem Declaration, Palestinians Want UN Membership as State

The Palestinians are pledging to push the United Nations until it accepts them as a full member state in reaction to President Trump’s declaration two weeks ago, saying that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

“We will go once again and many times to get full membership,” Palestinian Authority Chairman Mhmoud Abbas was quoted as saying on Monday evening. “We are a state and an authority, and we have borders and we have the right to get the world’s recognition of us.”

Abbas also said the Palestinians would join 22 international organizations that would help to strengthen the legal status of the “State of Palestine” globally.  He said every week they would join more international organizations.

The US had pressured the Palestinians into not applying for membership in the UN for the sake of the peace process.  But since Trump’s declaration Abbas has said that the Palestinians now reject the US as mediator in the negotiating process with Israel.

Abbas said Israel has no borders.

“There are no borders to Israel, and the international law is against any recognition of it,” Abbas said on Monday evening at the beginning of a meeting with senior Palestinian leaders.

“They deceived the General Assembly by saying they would implement resolution 181 and 194. Until today they have not implemented them,” Abbas said according to the Jerusalem Post.

The 1947 Resolution 181 is also known as the Partition Plan.  It called for the division of British Mandate Palestine into two states – one Jewish, one Arab and made Jerusalem an international city. 

The Jewish leadership accepted the resolution; the Arabs rejected it.  The Palestinians as a people didn’t exist at the time.

Israeli Ambassador Alan Baker told CBN News in an earlier interview that U.N. resolution 181 was significant because it marked the first time the international community agreed to a Jewish state and also, he noted, it was the Arabs who rejected it.

“Not just rejected it they waged a war not just against the State of Israel but against the UN resolution. It’s the first time a war has been waged against a UN resolution,” Baker said.

“What’s funny now is when Mahmoud Abbas…claims that this resolution 181 was the source of their right of the Palestinians to establish a Palestinian State.  There was no such thing as a Palestinian people,” Baker said. 

“Then the Palestinians were the Jews living in Palestine and so he claims that resolution 181 is the Magna Carta for establishing a Palestinian State because it guaranteed a Palestinian State and a Jewish state and he’s misleading the international community.  They rejected it, the Arabs rejected it and so it never really entered into force,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) says that more than 44 percent of Palestinians want to return to violence instead of diplomacy in seeking statehood.

PSR director Dr. Khalil Shikaki said according to a new public opinion poll that’s up from around 34 percent just three months ago.

Since Trump’s announcement on December 6, Palestinians have clashed with Israeli forces in the West Bank and launched 14 rockets at Israel from the Gaza Strip.  Four of those rockets were intercepted. 

In response to the rocket fire, Israel said it has targeted 40 Hamas sites in Gaza including observation positions, military compounds, weapons warehouses and ammunition manufacturing sites, the IDF said.