Turkey plans ‘Uniting for Peace’ UN bid for Palestine

ANKARA

Turkey and all members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) will launch a new initiative at the United Nations this week after their declaration of East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial recognition of the city as the “undivided” capital of Israel.

As stated by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the OIC summit on Dec. 13 in Istanbul, the OIC will focus on annulling Trump’s move on Jerusalem through the relevant U.N. bodies, Foreign Ministry sources told the Hürriyet Daily News on Dec. 17.

The road map of the OIC countries will include step-by-step diplomacy.

The first step will be taken by Egypt, as one of the temporary members of the U.N. Security Council, through a resolution to be submitted in the coming days. The resolution, which has been in fact drafted by Palestine, calls on all member states to not recognize the U.S. decision on Jerusalem, in line with a number of U.N. Security Council resolutions on the matter.

As the resolution will not be approved due to the U.S.’s veto at the Security Council, Turkey and all OIC countries will focus on the subsequent phase, bringing the resolution to the U.N. General Assembly through the “Uniting for Peace” mechanism.

This mechanism was introduced to the U.N. system in the late 1940s in a bid to avoid stalemates at the U.N. Security Council because of the veto rights of the five permanent members.

Half of the member nations at the U.N. have to vote in order to bring an issue to the U.N. agenda but voting needs at least a two-thirds majority under this mechanism. Palestine gained its non-member observer state at the U.N. General Assembly through a similar vote in 2012.

“This majority is already granted but we, as Turkey and all OIC countries, are working to increase the number of countries supporting the resolution,” sources said.