When on May 10, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted overwhelmingly in favour of Resolution ES-10/23 relating to Palestine’s membership application, some media qualified it as “support for Palestinian statehood”. This seeming confusion follows the United States government’s talking points conflating statehood with membership and claiming this would hurt “peace efforts”. That is, however, not the case: the resolution addressed the question of “membership” in the UN and not of Palestine’s “statehood”.
The UNGA settled Palestine’s statehood question at the UN in 2012 when it granted it non-member Observer State status – the same status Switzerland enjoyed prior to becoming a Member State in 2002 or the Holy See has had since 1964.
The US decision not to recognise the State of Palestine or to veto its UN membership application in the UN Security Council does not negate Palestine’s legal and political status – a State, albeit under foreign occupation, recognised by three quarters of the 193 Member States of the UN and counting. Recently, Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago formally recognised the State of Palestine.