The Palestinian leadership may turn to the UN General Assembly if Washington vetoes a draft UN Security Council resolution to reaffirm Beit-ul-Moqaddas (Jerusalem) status as unresolved, after US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize it as Israel’s capital.
The Palestinian United Nations envoy raised this option in remarks published in Saudi daily Arab News on Monday, ahead of a Security Council vote on an Egyptian-drafted resolution about Beit-ul-Moqaddas status which the United States is expected to veto, Reuters reported.
The draft says any “decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Beit-ul-Moqaddas have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded”.
Trump’s Dec. 6 decision to recognize Beit-ul-Moqaddas as Israel’s capital and to move the US Embassy to the city has provoked widespread anger and protests among Palestinians as well as broad international criticism, including from top US allies.
Arab News quoted Ambassador Riyad Mansour as saying that the Palestinians and Egyptians have worked closely with Security Council members while drafting the resolution to ensure that it gets overwhelming support.
“The Europeans in particular asked us to avoid terms like ‘denounce’ and ‘condemn,’ and not to mention the US by name,” it quoted Mansour as saying. “We acceded to their request but kept the active clauses rejecting all changes to Beit-ul-Moqaddas and the reaffirmation of previous decisions.”
The Palestinians have the option of invoking a rarely-used article of the UN Charter that calls for parties to a dispute not to cast a veto, Arab News said. But, it said, they are more likely to take the issue to the General Assembly under Resolution 377A, known as the “Uniting for Peace” resolution.
Resolution 377A was passed in 1950 and used to authorize the deployment of US troops to fight in the Korean war.
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