Jerusalem:
Israel will summon the ambassadors of countries that voted for full Palestinian UN membership on Sunday “for a protest meeting,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
It came after the Palestinian Authority said it would “reconsider” its relationship with the United States after Washington vetoed the Palestinian membership bid earlier this week.
In Thursday’s vote, 12 countries in the UN Security Council supported a resolution recommending full Palestinian membership, while two countries – Britain and Switzerland – abstained.
Only the United States, Israel’s closest ally, voted against and used its veto to block the resolution.
On Saturday, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein said the ministry “will summon the ambassadors of the countries that voted in the Security Council to improve the status of Palestinians in the UN for a protest meeting.”
“The ambassadors of France, Japan, South Korea, Malta, the Slovak Republic and Ecuador will be summoned for a demarche tomorrow, and a strong protest will be presented to them,” he said in a message on X.
“An identical protest will be presented to more countries,” he said.
“The unequivocal message that will be conveyed 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 price for terrorism.”
The draft resolution called for recommending to the General Assembly “that the State of Palestine be admitted to membership of the United Nations” instead of its current status of “non-member observer state” which it has held since 2012.
The majority of the UN’s 193 member states – 137 according to a Palestinian count – have recognized a Palestinian state.
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