The latest move in a Palestinian quest for statehood recognition drew a swift rebuke from US and Israeli envoys and a cool response from France.

In September, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas formally applied to the UN Security Council for full membership of the United Nations, ignoring a US warning that it would veto the move, as well as threats from members of the US Congress to restrict American aid to the Palestinians.

At the UN cultural agency UNESCO, 40 representatives of the 58-member board voted in favor of putting the matter to a vote, with four — the United States, Germany, Romania and Latvia — voting against and 14 abstaining, a source at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization told Reuters.

That set the scene for a membership vote at UNESCO’s General Conference, a meeting that runs from Oct. 25 to Nov. 10 and involves all 193 members of the agency, based in Paris.

In a statement, US ambassador to UNESCO David Killion urged all delegations to join the United States in voting “no.”

Nimrod Barkan, Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO, said the move decision would harm the UN agency and not further the Palestinian desire for statehood.

“The problem is that the politicization of UNESCO is detrimental to the ability of the organization to carry out its mandate,” he told Reuters. “It is not too late to wake up and save this organization from politicization.”

The Palestinians have had observer status at UNESCO since 1974. In order to gain full membership, so-called “states” that are not members of the United Nations may be admitted to UNESCO with a two-thirds majority of the General Conference.

It was not clear whether Palestine would need to be a recognized state for its UNESCO bid to succeed.

Barkan said he hoped there would be time between now and the General Conference to “undo” the decision given that there was no such entity as Palestine.

“They (executive board) have invented a non-existent entity and we have made it clear to the Director General and the UNESCO apparatus that such a state does not exist and they have decided to ignore it.”

An official at the Palestinian mission declined to comment.

To keep pressure on the United Nations, Abbas’s Palestinian Authority has been looking at alternative institutions that may recognize their sought-after statehood status — a campaign triggered by a breakdown of peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel last year.

On Tuesday, it won partnership status from the Council of Europe, European Union’s main human rights body.
 

The manoeuvring at UNESCO has also angered US lawmakers.

Kay Granger, Chairwoman of the House State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, said US funding for UNESCO could be cut if full membership was granted.

“Since April, I have made it clear to the Palestinian leadership that I would not support sending US taxpayer money to the Palestinians if they sought statehood at the United Nations,” Granger said in a statement.

“Making a move in another UN agency will not only jeopardize our relationship with the Palestinians, it will jeopardize our contributions to the United Nations,” said Granger, who controls some $200 million of aid for Palestinians.

The US government has said the Palestinians can gain an independent state on land captured by Israel in a 1967 war only via negotiations with the Jewish state, Washington’s main ally in the Middle East.

France, which has advocated observer status of the United Nations, said that UN subsidiary UNESCO was not the place to further the Palestinian case for recognition.

“The priority is to revive negotiations,” foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said. “We consider that UNESCO is not the appropriate place and the General Conference is not the right moment.”

Envoys from the Middle East “Quartet” — the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States — will meet in Brussels on Sunday to try to revive peace efforts.