Palestine Granted Full UNESCO Membership

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Controversial move endorsed in UN cultural agency vote despite US threat of withholding £50m in funds

 

The UN Cultural and Educational Agency UNESCO has granted Palestine full membership in a move that Israel and the United States say could harm Middle East peace efforts.

Delegates approved the membership by 107 votes to 14.

France, which had voiced serious doubts about the motion, in the end approved it along with almost all Arab, African, Latin American and Asian nations, including China and India.

Israel, the United States, Australia, Canada and Germany voted against, while Japan and Britain abstained.

Israel’s ambassador Nimrod Barkan admitted before the vote that he was resigned to the Palestinians gaining entry. Barkan slammed countries that “have adopted a science fiction version of reality by admitting a non-existent state to the science organisation…. UNESCO should deal in science not science fiction” he said.

He admitted the vote, while symbolic, could have a knock-on effect:

“There is potential for a cascading effect of this resolution on many other UN specialized agencies and in New York.”

 

Palestine Vote: Statement by UNESCO Director-General

 


English Statement starts at 2:39

 

 

UNESCO members vote one-by-one on whether to allow Palestinians full membership to the cultural agency.

 

Huge cheers went up in UNESCO after delegates voted to approve the membership.

One shouted “Long Live Palestine!” in French.

 

 

“Gutless UK abstained…. collapse of stout party. Expect big sulk, toys being thrown out of pram etc.” — Stuart Littlewood (VT’s UK Correspondent)

 

Sources: Reuters /AFP / The Guardian, UK

 

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Debbie Menon is an independent writer based in Dubai. Her main focus are the US-Mid- East Conflicts. Her writing has been featured in many print and online publications. Her writing reflects the incredible resilience, almost superhuman steadfastness of the occupied and oppressed Palestinians, who are now facing the prospect of a final round of ethnic cleansing. She is committed to exposing Israel's Lobbies' control of ‘U.S. Middle East Policy. Control’ which amounts to treason by the Zionist lobbies in America and its stooges in Congress, and that guarantees there can never be a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, only catastrophe for all, in the region and the world. Her mission is to inform and educate internet viewers seeking unfiltered information about real events on issues of the US/Middle East conflicts that are unreported, underreported, or distorted in the American media. PS: For those of her detractors that think she is being selective and even “one-sided,” tough, that is the point of her work, to present an alternative view and interpretation of the US-Israel-Middle East conflict, that has been completely ignored in mainstream discourse. The purpose is to look at the current reality from a different and critical perspective, not to simply rehash the pro-US/Israel perspective, smoke and mirrors that has been allowed to utterly and completely dominate Mainstream discourse.