The Palestinian Authority will submit a resolution seeking enhanced UN observer status for ‘Palestine’ later this year after the U.S. presidential election, a Palestine Liberation Organization official said on Friday.
"We have begun consultations on the format of the text that will be presented to the General Assembly to upgrade the Palestinian status to an observer state status," Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the PLO's executive committee, was quoted by AFP as having told reporters.
"Most people are looking at the completion of consultations before the end of the year. There are others who have suggested that we target the 29th of November because it's the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People."
"The president said openly that he is not going to present it before the American elections," on November 6, she added.
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday formally announced that the PA would ask the General Assembly to grant it "super-observer" status that could give it access to UN institutions and agencies.
The announcement, made in his address to the General Assembly, came a year after Abbas asked the Security Council to grant the PA full member status. That bid has failed due to a lack of support in the 15-member Security Council.
"We lost the momentum of last year, very clearly, at the Security Council bid," Ashrawi said, according to AFP.
She added, "We have reached a critical point. Israel has been allowed to undermine the two-state solution to the point where this is a last-ditch effort to try to rescue the chances of peace and the two-state solution by the Palestinians."
In his speech to the General Assembly, Abbas launched into a tirade against Israel, condemning Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and saying they constitute "ethnic cleansing" by Israel.
He said new Jewish communities and in and around Jerusalem and demolition of “Palestinian homes” are "a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people," but did not mention that any Jew who enters a PA village takes his life into his hands and that he has announced repeatedly that no Jews would be allowed to live in a PA state.
PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki has predicted that Arab countries support a unilateral PA bid for statehood recognition in the UN General Assembly. He said he believed the PA would win 130-140 votes should the motion be put forward at the world body, securing a majority in the General Assembly.
The Obama administration has said it will oppose the PA’s renewed statehood bid at the UN and will “make the case” at the United Nations for Israeli- PA talks when Abbas submits it.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American Desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)