This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A new vote in the United Nations General Assembly has given a boost to the demands by Palestinians to be declared a nation and given formal international recognition.
There are, in fact, multiple Arab nations represented at the U.N. that include Palestinians, who are not a nation.
Nevertheless, they have demanded the full privileges of being one, and a General Assembly vote this week saw 143 nations vote in favor of full recognition. Nine including the U.S. and Israel opposed the idea and 25 nations abstained.
The vote, however, was not enough to bestow nationhood, as the proposal also must pass through the U.N. Security Council, where a plan was vetoed by the United States.
A report from Reuters said the proposal "determines that the state of Palestine ... should therefore be admitted to membership" and it "recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter favorably."
Palestinians are pushing for more rights as their war with Israel still rages in the Gaza Strip.
It started when soldiers from the Gaza-based Hamas terror group invaded Israel Oct. 7, 2023, and slaughtered some 1,200 civilians, often in brutal and barbaric ways.
Riyah Mansour, who is in the U.N. under a partial recognition bestowed earlier on Palestinians, said, "We want peace, we want freedom."
However, Gilad Erdan, U.N. ambassador, said, "As long as so many of you are 'Jew-hating,' you don't really care that the Palestinians are not 'peace-loving.'"
He said the assembly actually was "shredding" the U.N. Charter,
The "state" of Palestine was recognized by 138 nations in 2019 and it was given the right to be a non-member U.N. observer.
It has not held elections in nearly two decades, and it has been criticized for human-rights abuses against journalists, human-rights activists and dissenters.
The U.N.'s process requires new members first to be approved by the 15-member Security Council, which Palestinians have been unable to obtain.
While the U.N. has claimed to support "two states" with a side-by-side Palestine and Israel, Palestinians actually advocate for their state to be "From the river to the sea," which would, in fact, eliminate Israel entirely.
Members claim to want their territory to be large swaths of what now is Israel.
The report noted that under American law, Washington is not allowed to fund any U.N. organization that grants full membership to any group that does not have the "internationally recognized attributes" of statehood.
