Palestine Becomes a UN Observer State

On 29 November 2012 — the sixty-fifth anniversary of General Assembly Resolution 181, the partition plan — the Assembly adopted Resolution 67/19, “Status of Palestine in the United Nations,” according Palestine non-member observer state status. The vote was 138 in favor, 9 against, with 41 abstentions; Israel, the United States, and Canada were among the few no votes.

The upgrade came a year after President Mahmoud Abbas’s bid for full UN membership stalled at the Security Council under threat of an American veto. The new status — the same category then held only by the Holy See — did not make Palestine a UN member, but it affirmed the General Assembly’s recognition of Palestinian statehood and opened the door to treaties and international bodies. Palestine acceded to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court at the start of 2015, paving the way for the ICC’s investigation into the situation in Palestine.

Israel responded within hours, announcing plans for 3,000 new settlement homes, including in the sensitive E1 area east of Jerusalem. The Palestinian flag was raised at UN headquarters in September 2015, and “State of Palestine” nameplates took their place in the General Assembly hall — symbols of a statehood recognized by most of the world’s nations but still unrealized on the ground.