Palestinian statehood bid kicked into committee by UN security council
Move comes as efforts to launch fresh peace talks are threatened by row over new Jewish settlement
The UN security council has moved the issue of recognising a Palestinian state to a committee which could take weeks to reach a decision.
The move came as US and European efforts to launch fresh peace talks and avoid a diplomatic confrontation after Washington said it will veto the statehood bid were undermined by Israel's "provocative" announcement that it will build more than 1,000 more homes in a major Jewish settlement.
The Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, said the security council should approve the statehood request because much of the world already recognises Palestine as a country.
"We hope that the security council will shoulder its responsibility and address this application with a positive attitude, especially since we have 139 countries that have recognised the state of Palestine so far, meaning more than two-thirds majority," Mansour said. "We are ready to govern ourselves."
But the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, said that recognition of statehood is meaningless without a peace agreement.
"A real Palestinian state, a viable Palestinian state, will not be achieved in composing things from the outside but only in direct negotiations," he said.
"We had peace with Egypt. It wasn't imposed; we negotiated. With Jordan, the same thing."
The UN committee on new admissions, which is made up of the 15 members of the security council, will meet on Friday morning. It could vote immediately on the Palestinian request or agree to study the matter further.
Last week, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, resisted US pressure to abandon the request for statehood. But at the urging of Washington, London and Paris which were keen to avoid voting on the issue because of the impact on opinion in the Middle East of failing to support the Palestinian bid he privately agreed to the slow tracking of the issue while f! resh att empts are made to restart negotiations.
Those efforts were immediately compromised when the US ensured that a statement by the quartet of the US, UN, EU and Russia proposing a framework timetable for talks, and the immediate addressing of the contentious issues of borders and security, did not call for a halt to construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. But the statement did ask both sides to refrain from provocative actions.
This week, Israel announced that it will build 1,100 new houses as well as public buildings and an industrial zone in Gilo settlement.
Mansour said the move was a deliberate snub by Israel to peace efforts, because the Palestinians have said that continued construction of housing for Jewish settlers on occupied land is a barrier to talks.
"They gave 1,100 answers of saying no to the effort of the international community to open doors to negotiation, and I think speaks clearly that Israel is not interested in negotiating with us in spite of the fact they say they would like to do so," he said.
Prosor said the settlement expansion is inside Jerusalem and therefore distinct from other parts of the occupied territories. "Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people. This is our heart. Jerusalem, if I may say so, was the capital of the Jewish people when London was still a swamp," he said.
However, the area that Gilo is built on was not within the municipal boundaries at the time Israel captured the east of the city in the 1967 war. The city limits have since been greatly expanded to annex Gilo and other settlements to the city.
Prosor said Palestinian objections are an excuse for not negotiating.
"Everything is negotiable, but I hear the Palestinian using every pretext in order to find a reason why not to go in to negotiations," he said.
The US has called the new settlement construction "counter-productive" and "distressing". But the Palestinians have little confidence that Washington will do anything about it! after B arack Obama made what was widely seen as a strongly pro-Israel speech to the UN.
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