The President of the Security Council today referred Palestine's application to become a United Nations Member State to the committee that deals with the admission of new members. The Council's decision to refer the application comes almost a week after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas submitted the application to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who then forwarded it to the 15-member body. The Council's Committee on the Admission of New Members is slated to consider the application on Friday. Any application for UN membership is considered by the Council, which decides whether or not to recommend admission to the 193-member General Assembly, which then has to adopt a resolution for the admission of a Member State. Palestine, which currently has observer status at the UN, submitted the application for full membership “based on the Palestinian people's natural, legal and historic rights” and based on resolution 181 adopted by the General Assembly in November 1947, Abbas wrote in his submission to the Secretary-General. In resolution 181, the Assembly decided on the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab States. Abbas added that the submission comes “after decades of displacement, dispossession and the foreign military occupation of my people” and with the successful culmination of the Palestinian State-building program. BM
