UNSC set to vote on Palestinian resolution

United Nations Security Council is expected to vote shortly on a Palestinian draft resolution that calls for a peace deal with Israel within a year and an end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories by late 2017.

Jordan’s UN Ambassador Dina Kawar said Arab delegations had agreed the draft should go to a vote as soon as possible. It was later announced that the vote would take place at 22:00 GMT.

The Palestinian resolution calls for occupied East Jerusalem to be the capital of Palestine, an end to Israeli settlement building and settling the issue of Palestinian prisoner releases.

Palestinian officials also said the draft resolution calls for negotiations to be based on territorial lines that existed before Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in 1967.

“We’ve been deliberating this issue for almost three and a half months. It is not a lack of flexibility, because we took some of the French ideas in our revised text,” Riyad Mansour, Palestinian ambassador to the UN, told Al Jazeera. 

Diplomats have said that it was unlikely that the resolution would garner nine votes under the current makeup of the council – a scenario that would allow the US to avoid resorting to its veto power.

Reporting from the UN’s headquarters in New York, Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey said that the move to push for a resolution comes out of Palestinian frustration. “The move was first discussed some months ago after the breakdown of the US-brokered peace talks. The US has said outright they will not support the resolution and will veto it,” Saloomey said. 

Several European parliaments have adopted non-binding motions calling for recognition of Palestine.

The Palestinians have warned that if the bid to win support for a UN resolution fails, they are prepared to join the International Criminal Court to file suits against Israel.