The United Nations General Assembly will vote on Friday on a proposal to request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice in The Hague regarding the "legal status of the occupation."
The proposal already states that Israel's presence in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria is illegal and asks the Court to recommend the steps that the UN and countries around the world should take against Israel which, according to the proposal, constitutes "annexation" of the territories.
The UN’s Special Political and Decolonization Committee (Fourth Committee) last month voted to approve the motion and passed it to the General Assembly to approve it as well.
Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan said ahead of Friday’s vote, "The outrageous resolution calling for the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice is a moral stain on the UN and every country that supports it. No international body can decide that the Jewish people are ‘occupiers’ in their own homeland. Any decision from a judicial body which receives its mandate from the morally bankrupt and politicized UN is completely illegitimate.”
“The Palestinians have rejected every peace initiative, while supporting and inciting terror. Instead of pushing the Palestinians to change, the UN is doing the opposite: helping them to harm the only vibrant democracy in the Middle East which recently signed 4 peace agreements with Arab countries. We will not take part in this disgraceful show of lies," he added.
Ambassador Erdan continued, "The decision to hold a vote that deals with Israel on Shabbat is another example of the moral decay of the UN, which prevents Israel's position from being heard in a vote whose results are predetermined."
In light of the voting time taking place on Shabbat, Ambassador Erdan announced that he would not speak at the meeting and that the United States Mission to the UN would vote against the proposed resolution on behalf of the State of Israel.
At the UN General Assembly High-Level Week in September 2021, Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced in his remarks that if Israel did not withdraw to the pre-1967 lines within a year, the Palestinian Arabs would turn to The Hague. Friday’s vote is the realization of Abbas's ultimatum.
Ahead of the vote, an official in the Prime Minister's Office said on Friday that “Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke with several leaders regarding the vote at the UN General Assembly, which includes an appeal to the ICJ to formulate a legal opinion on the ‘Israeli occupation.’”
(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)