Hamas on Saturday continued to condemn the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) draft resolution to the United Nations (UN) Security Council, as the Security Council prepares to vote on the resolution, likely on Monday.
Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar said, according to the Ma’an news agency, that the draft resolution in favor of Palestinian statehood was “disastrous,” and that it has “no future in the land of Palestine.”
Zahar explained that Hamas would not accept the resolution because of its focus on the pre-1967 borders, and not on all of Israeli territory which Hamas considers to be “historic Palestine”.
He further added that the movement refuses to consider allowing to be Jerusalem a capital for both Palestinian and Israeli states.
The text of the draft resolution calls for Israel to “end the occupation” – that is, to withdraw from Judea and Samaria – by 2017.
The draft resolution would set a 12-month deadline for wrapping up negotiations on a final settlement and the end of 2017 as the time frame for completing an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria.
The resolution has already been criticized by Hamas, whose spokesman said last week the resolution “doesn’t represent [the] consensus of the Palestinian people.”
Abu Zuhri called on the PA to withdraw the resolution, saying, “We believe in Hamas that this draft resolution doesn’t cover [all] Palestinians and [t]here is a large factional opposition.”
Meanwhile, it appears as though plans on a vote in the Security Council are moving forward. The PA chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said on Friday that the Security Council would vote on the resolution on Monday at the latest.
According to a report on Kol Yisrael government radio, Erekat said that some revisions have been made to the original text of the resolution in recent days. The final wording has not yet been made public.
The original text was reportedly unacceptable to several countries, including Luxembourg and France, and diplomatic sources estimated this week that the vote on the unilateral resolution is likely to be postponed because of those countries’ objection to the text.
Even if the resolution passes the vote at the Security Council, it is presumed that the United States would veto it.
While Secretary of State John Kerry has not publicly stated that Washington would use its veto against the resolution, his spokeswoman said last week the United States will not support the resolution.
Washington has seen the text of the draft resolution and “it is not something that we would support,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. “We think others feel the same and we are calling for further consultations. The Palestinians understand that.”
