RAMALLAH: On Thursday the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly voted in favor of upgrading Palestine's status from entity to nonmember observer state. 138 states voted in favor of the upgrade, 41 abstained, and 9 voted against it. “We believe that the international community is standing before the last chance at the two-state solution," Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in his address. The United States and Israel vigorously opposed the UN bid and called repeatedly on the PA to abandon what they called “unilateral" action. The PA leadership, however, paid little attention to the objections and went ahead with the vote. A little over a week before the UNGA vote, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman suggested toppling the Ramallah-based PA. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said that the Palestinians were waging political war against Israel. Former PM Ehud Olmert, on the other hand, said Israel had nothing to fear from the UNGA's recognition of Palestine and that he supported it. In an exclusive interview with the Daily Beast, Olmert said: The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, told the UNGA that the Palestinians would regret the upgrade because its only result is setting back the peace process, which she argued Palestinians should engage in without preconditions. The full implications of the UN upgrade are not yet clear. The International Criminal Court is expected to examine the legal implications in the coming weeks. Palestinians, however, view the upgrade as both a symbolic and diplomatic victory of Israel, who they say has long held all of the diplomatic cards and used the negotiation process to further entrench “facts on the ground" such as illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
