Palestinians call on UN to "react" to Israeli settlement expansion

The Palestinians on Thursday called on the UN Security Council to "react" to Israel's recent expansion in its settlement activities in the occupied territory. "We want the Security Council to react to this latest escalation and provocation with a view of stopping it and containing it because you all know that if it is not contained it might lead to further escalations or provocations and the situation is very volatile in our region," Riyad Mansour, Palestine's permanent observer to the United Nations, told reporters outside the Security Council. Earlier, Mansour met with the president of the Security Council right before a close-door meeting of the Council admission committee on the Palestinian bid for full UN membership. On Monday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) became the first UN agency to recognize Palestinian statehood by voting overwhelmingly to admit Palestine as its 195th full member. In response, Israel withheld tax revenues to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and ordered the building of 2,000 houses in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as a future capital, and decided to ban UNESCO representatives from entering the Palestinian territories. Mansour called for action from the Security Council against this "Israeli provocation" and "to bring it to an immediate end and to release our tax money immediately." Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement sent to Xinhua regarding the PNA's UNESCO membership, that "such moves do not advance peace, but rather push it further away." The Security Council admissions committee met at around 3:00 p. m. EDT (2100GMT) on Thursday to discuss the Palestinian bid for full UN membership. Procedure in the world organization calls for the Security Council to "recommend" the application to the UN General Assembly before the 193-member body. If it fails to garner nine votes in the council or receives a veto from one of the five veto-wielding permanent members of Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, it dies. The United States, one of the five permanent council members and a close ally of Israel, already stated publicly that it will veto the Palestinian bid at the Security Council because Washington holds the Palestinian statehood should emerge from negotiations with Israel. Palestine applied formally on Sept. 23 to the UN for a seat at the Security Council. The committee has at least three months to review the Palestinian statehood bid before reporting to the Security Council. "We believe that that is a sufficient number of meetings to consider our application and it is time for the Security Council to act on our application," Mansour said.