CLC: You mentioned earlier that the Security Council admission committee had eight meetings over the span of almost fifty days, whereas South Sudan, when they applied for membership, were in and out of the committee in a matter of hours.
RM: Well the process for South Sudan, from declaring independence to voting on their acceptance in the General Assembly as a member, took five days. It started Saturday and by Wednesday it became a member of the UN.
CLC: Portugal's Ambassador to the UN José Filipe Moraes Cabral, who was the Security Council president for the month of November, was asked about this discrepancy and he said that the two cases are "not comparable."
RM: Well the cases are different, but I'll give you another: Israel. Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948. It submitted its application for admission on the 29th of November 1948, and it pushed with the help of the United States and the Soviet Union at that time for action by the Security Council. On December 17, 1948, the Council acted on their request. They received five votes in favor out of eleven; the threshold was seven, so they did not prevail.
They then went to the General Assembly and Abba Eban, who was at the time the representative of Israel in these issues, and asked the General Assembly's special political committee what it would take for Israel to receive positive recommendation in the Security Council. The special political committee asked Israel to abide by resolution 181, which partitioned Palestine; Israel said it would abide by that resolution. Then the committee said that Israel had to abide by resolution 194, which called for the return and compensation of refugees; Abba Eban said that Israel would abide by that resolution.
Then in March, again in the Security Council, they revisited the application of Israel and they were able to receive nine out of eleven votes with no veto. May 11, 1949, the General Assembly gave them a two-thirds majority present and voting acceptance to become a member state. So that's another example.
We hope that our case will not be like those who've taken years, and it's not going to be like South Sudan because we've spent more time. We hope that our case will be more like Israel.
CLC: What is it going to take for the U.S. to come on board with the Palestinian statehood bid in the Security Council?
RM: I think that is a good question to ask the Americans. We believe that we have more than two-thirds majority of countries that have recognized the state of Palestine.
CLC: And what is the number, as it stands right now?
RM: It is now 131 countries, if I'm not mistaken. And I can ask how many countries do you have today that enjoy this many countries recognizing them as a state? For example, Israel doesn't have that at all. Israel maybe has about half of that - definitely under 100.
There is global consensus on the two-state solution, which specifically means the independence of the state of Palestine, because the other state has been in existence since 1948. So when you have all these conditions, why would anyone stand in our way for assuming our national right and historic and legal right to join the community of nations?
To those who say that we cannot have it until, you know, it has to be done through negotiations - independence and therefore membership at the UN is an expression of self-determination that is not for negotiation or permission from Israel. That is something for the Palestinian people to decide as an expression of self-determination alone. This is how Israel did it, how it was done by the United States of America and how it has been done by the all the countries that became independent after ending colonial control. We are not going to be the exception to the rule.
But that doesn't mean that we will not negotiate the six final status issues with Israel: borders, security, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements and water. We will continue to be committed, as our president has said, to negotiate with our Israeli neighbors on these issues, but our independence is not one of them.
