The U.S. has avoided having to decide if it will pull funding from the U.N. and the its specialized agencies, which it would have had to do under public law passed in the 1990s.
The U.S. has promised to vote against any resolution that would seek to grant the Palestinians full membership in the United Nations after a General Assembly resolution passed with significant support from member states.
“Our vote does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood,” U.S. Deputy Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood said after the vote. “We have been very clear that we support it and seek to advance it meaningfully: Instead, it is an acknowledgment that statehood will only come from a process that involves direct negotiations between the parties.”
“This resolution does not resolve the concerns about the Palestinian membership application raised in April in the Security Council through the admissions committee process,” Wood added. “Should the Security Council take up the Palestinian membership application as a result of this resolution, there will be a similar outcome.”
The vote, brought to the floor by the United Arab Emirates, received support from 143 members, with nine voting against and 25 abstaining.
The “no” votes included Argentina, Hungary, Israel and the United States, among others, while the abstentions included Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Monaco, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, among others.
