Israel to summon UN envoys to protest Palestine membership vote

Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan speaks during a Security Council meeting at UN headquarters in New York on Thursday. [AP/YONHAP]

Israel will summon ambassadors of countries — including South Korea — that voted in the United Nations (UN) Security Council in favor of Palestine’s full membership to the UN to lodge a “strong protest,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry said Sunday.

“The foreign ministry will summon for a protest talk the ambassadors of the countries that voted in the Security Council in favor of upgrading the status of the Palestinians in the UN,” spokesperson Oren Marmorstein said through a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday.

The 12 countries who voted in favor of the motion included Korea, France, Japan, Malta, Slovakia and Ecuador. On Thursday, the 15-
member UN Security Council voted on a motion to recommend upgrading Palestine’s status to full UN membership to the General Assembly, but the resolution failed to pass due to a veto by the United States.

“The unambiguous message that will be delivered to the ambassadors: A political gesture to the Palestinians and a call to recognize a Palestinian state — six months after the October 7 massacre — is a prize for terrorism,” said Marmorstein. “Israel will not agree to the establishment of a terror state that will endanger its citizens.”

The Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that the veto by the United States was “blatant aggression which pushes the region ever further to the edge of the abyss” and that it condemned “in the strongest terms the American position biased toward the occupation” in a statement after the vote on Thursday.

Previously, Palestine applied to become a full member of the UN in 2011, but the United States vetoed its recognition. It has been a “nonmember observer state” at the UN since 2012.

BY LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]