Just days ago, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to recognize Palestine as a non-member observer state, with 138 delegates voting in favor of the region's status upgrade, nine against, and 41 abstentions.
While the majority of member states supported the measure, votes against include the United States, Israel, Canada, Panama, Palau, Czech Republic, Micronesia, Marshall Islands, and Nauru.
The Palestinian Question
When Israel was birthed in 1948, neighboring Arab States went to war with the fledgling nation, resulting in 750,000 displaced Palestinian refugees, according to the UN. Once again, in 1967, 500,000 Palestinians were evicted from their homes due to an Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Syrian Golan, and Egyptian Sinai. While the international community drafted numerous edicts to orient the region's trajectory towards peaceful and secure cohabitation, it wasn't until 2002 that a "road map" for the two-state solution was proposed by the United States, the Russian Federation, and United Nations. President Obama put his weight behind the two-state solution at a 2010 General Assembly meeting, which remains the administration's objective, despite its disagreement with the UN's updated recognition of Palestine. Palestinian President Mahmous Abbas officially submitted the application for Palestine to become a UN member State a year later in 2011.
The International Community Responds
The newfound status of Palestine is the "last chance to save the two-state solution," Abbas urged. "We did not come here seeking to delegitimize a state established years ago, and that is Israel; rather we came here to affirm the legitimacy of the state that must now achieve its independence, and that is Palestine."
"The resolution in the U.N. today won't change anything on the ground. It won't advance the establishment of the Palestinian state, but rather, put it further off," responded Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu. "Israel is prepared to live in peace with a Palestinian state. But for peace to endure, Israel's security must be protected, the Palestinians must recognize the Jewish state and they must be prepared to end the conflict with Israel once and for all."
U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who has recently drawn fire from Republicans in her bid for Secretary of State, spoke in a similar tone: "Today's unfortunate resolution places further obstacles in the path of peace. Today's grand pronouncements will soon fade and the Palestinian people will wake up tomorrow and find that little about their lives has changed saved that the prospects of a durable peace have only receded."
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon assured the international community that "there can be no substitute for negotiations," following the passage of the measure.