Israel will summon for dressing-downs on Sunday the ambassadors of six of the 12 countries that voted in favor of full Palestinian U.N. membership.
The United States vetoed the PLO bid during a vote at the U.N. Security Council on Thursday afternoon. The United Kingdom and Switzerland abstained on the Algeria-drafted resolution.
“The ambassadors of France, Japan, South Korea, Malta, Slovakia and Ecuador will be summoned tomorrow for a demarche, and a strong protest will be presented to them,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein on Saturday.
“The unambiguous message that will be delivered to the ambassadors: A political gesture to the Palestinians and a call to recognize a Palestinian state—six months after the October 7 massacre—is a prize for terrorism. Israel will not agree to the establishment of a terror state that will endanger its citizens,” he added.
Marmorstein said that instead of making “political gestures that reward the Hamas terrorist organization,” the countries should “apply pressure on Hamas to immediately release the 133 women and men being held hostage.
“The international pressure should be applied on Hamas, which perpetrated the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and continues to reject every deal that would lead to the release of the hostages and a humanitarian pause for the residents of Gaza,” he said.
An identical protest will soon be presented to the other countries that voted for the Algerian proposal.
Robert Wood, deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the Security Council on Thursday that Washington has “long been clear that premature actions here in New York, even with the best intentions, will not achieve statehood for the Palestinian people.”
Wood questioned whether the Palestinians meet the basic criteria for U.N. statehood, which prevented the committee from reaching consensus on the original application for full Palestinian U.N. membership in 2011.
By U.S. law, full membership for Ramallah at the United Nations outside a political settlement with Israel would automatically terminate American funding for the international body.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz described the Security Council vote as a “reward for terrorism,” and commended the United States for vetoing the “shameful proposal.”
“It is outrageous that even half a year after the October 7 massacre, the U.N. Security Council failed to condemn Hamas horrific crimes. Terrorism will not be rewarded. Israel will continue to fight until Hamas is destroyed and all 133 hostages in Gaza are released,” said Katz.
