What is in store for Palestine in the UN?

Will 2011 be fateful for Palestine?

On November 15th Palestine celebrated Independence Day. The country isn’t recognized by Israel, the USA and some European countries. Palestine’s application for membership in the UN has not been considered yet. Israel and the USA stand against it, as they say unilateral actions by Palestine will finally ruin the peace dialogue in the Middle East. However, according to a recent statement by the Palestinian foreign ministry, it will go ahead with efforts to gain full membership in the UN, even if they will have to pass through many rounds of negotiations in the Security Council of the organization.

Ahead of these developments, the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Palestinian State to the Russian Federation, Fayed Mustafa, participated in the conference entitled “Will 2011 be fateful for Palestine?” “We hope that the Council in general will come to a positive response to our request. We have already achieved the minimum aim of our program: 9 states of 15 will vote in our favor. We know that a great number of states had to go through a long and difficult process of international recognition, so if we don’t succeed now we’ll carry on trying,” Fayed Mustafa noted.

He admitted the objective is difficult, but said that Palestine has already achieved a great deal of success on the international field: for example, the Palestinian State entered the UNESCO organization this year as a full and sovereign member. This success was possible due to the understanding of the right of Palestinians to have their own state as a nation by the international community. According to the ambassador, the country is working on entering other international organizations apart from the UN. “After the UN Council session of November 11, we will draw certain conclusions and we’ll define our future strategy,” he said.

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