UNSC refers Palestine to committee to consider full membership

The United Nations Security Council on Monday (Apr 8) referred the Palestinian Authority's application to become a full member of the world body to the committee on the admission of new members.

It comes as Israel's six-month-old war in Gaza since the Oct 7 attack has revived calls for Palestinians to be given a state of their own.

The Palestinians relaunched a more-than-decade-old application to become a full member state of the United Nations.

According to the Palestinian Authority, which rules parts of the occupied West Bank, 137 of the 193 UN members already recognise a Palestinian state.

They include many countries from the Middle East, Africa and other regions, but not the United States, Canada, most of Western Europe, Australia, Japan or South Korea.

UNESCO RECOGNISED PALESTINE IN 2011

In 2011, with peace talks at a standstill, the Palestinians decided to push ahead with a campaign for full UN membership for the "state of Palestine".

The quest failed but, in a groundbreaking move on October 31 of that year, the UN cultural agency UNESCO voted to accept the Palestinians as a full member.

The decision triggered a furious reaction from Israel and the United States, which suspended their funding to the Paris-based body.

They quit UNESCO outright in 2018, although the United States rejoined last year.

In November 2012, the Palestinian flag was raised for the first time at the United Nations in New York after the General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to upgrade the status of the Palestinians to a "non-member observer state".

Three years later, the International Criminal Court also accepted Palestine as a state party.

SWEDEN RECOGNISED PALESTINE IN 2014

In 2014, Sweden, which has a large Palestinian community, became the first EU member in western Europe to recognise a Palestinian state.

The move followed months of almost daily clashes in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

A state of Palestine had earlier been recognised by six other European countries -- Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania.

Israel reacted angrily to Stockholm's move, with then foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman telling the Swedes that "relations in the Middle East are a lot more complex than the self-assembly furniture of IKEA".