The Palestinian Authority is seeking a U.N. Security Council vote this month to become a full member of the global body, the Palestinian U.N. envoy said Monday.
Riyad Mansour, who has permanent observer status in the U.N., made the Palestinian plans public as Israel's war on Gaza passes a six-month milestone in Gaza and Tel Aviv is expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Mansour told Reuters that the aim was for the Security Council to take a decision at an April 18 ministerial meeting on the Middle East, but that a vote had yet to be scheduled. He said a 2011 Palestinian application for full membership was still pending because the 15-member council never took a formal decision.
"The intention is to put the application to a vote in the Security Council this month," he added.
Alongside a push to end the war, global pressure has grown for a resumption of efforts to broker a two-state solution - with an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Israel retaliated against Hamas' October attack by imposing a total siege on Gaza, then launching an air and ground assault that has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
UN approval
An application to become a full U.N. member needs to be approved by the Security Council - where the United States can cast a veto - and then at least two-thirds of the 193-member General Assembly.
The U.S. mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A Security Council committee assessed the Palestinian application in 2011 for several weeks. But the committee did not reach a unanimous position and the council never voted on a resolution to recommend Palestinian membership.
At the time, diplomats said the Palestinians did not have enough support in the Security Council to force a veto by the United States, which had said it opposed the move. A resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the U.S., Russia, China, France or Britain to be adopted.
Instead of pushing for a council vote, the Palestinians went to the U.N. General Assembly seeking to become a non-member observer state. The assembly approved de facto recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine in November 2012.
Little progress has been made in achieving Palestinian statehood since the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the early 1990s. Among the obstacles is expanding Israeli settlements.
The Palestinian Authority, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank and is Israel's partner in the Oslo Accords. Hamas in 2007 ousted the Palestinian Authority from power in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli settlements risk eliminating any practical possibility of a Palestinian state, U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk said last month. He said the transfer by Israel of its own population into occupied territory amounted to a war crime.
U.S. President Joe Biden's administration said in February that Israel's expansion of West Bank settlements was inconsistent with international law, signaling a return to long-standing U.S. policy on the issue that had been reversed by the previous administration of Donald Trump.