OIC Welcomes General Assembly Resolution Supporting Request for Full Membership and Additional Privileges for State of Palestine and Recommends Security Council Reconsideration of Request and

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (#OIC) welcomed the General Assembly’s adoption, with overwhelming support, of a historic resolution affirming that the State of Palestine is qualified for full membership in the United Nations, granting it additional privileges and rights, and recommending to the Security Council to reconsider the matter positively.

The OIC believes that this resolution expresses international consensus to support the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, including their right to self-determination, freedom, justice, and independence and the need to end the Israeli colonial occupation of #Palestinian land since 1967.

The OIC underlined its full support for the legitimate right of the State of Palestine to realize its political and legal status at the United Nations like other countries of the world as decades-old enforceable entitlement, pursuant to the political, legal, historical, and natural right of the Palestinian people on their land, as affirmed by the relevant United Nations resolutions and on the strength of the recognition it enjoys from 144 countries as well as its full membership in scores of international organizations and conventions.

The OIC Secretary-General, Hissein Brahim Taha, appreciated the stances of the countries that supported the UN General Assembly draft resolution and at the same time urged the Security Council to positively reconsider the request of the State of Palestine to gain full membership in the United Nations. He called on states that are yet to recognize the State of Palestine to do so in order to support the efforts to end Israeli colonial occupation, end the crime of genocide the Palestinian people are facing, and enable them to exercise their legitimate rights, including the right to return, to self-determination, to realize the establishment of their Palestinian state on the borders of June 1967 with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital, and to achieve just, comprehensive and durable peace in the region, on the basis of relevant resolutions of the United Nations and the Arab Peace initiative.