The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that 164 countries in the United Nations General Assembly voted in favor of a resolution affirming the Palestinian people's right to self-determination.
Eight countries voted against it: Israel, the United States, Micronesia, Argentina, Paraguay, Papua New Guinea, Palau, and Nauru.
Nine countries abstained from voting: Ecuador, Togo, Tonga, Panama, Fiji, Cameroon, Marshall Islands, Samoa, and South Sudan.
According to the agency, the text of the resolution refers to the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion of July 2024, which states that “the continued existence of the State of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory is illegal,” stressing that Palestinians have “the right to self-determination” and that “Israeli settlements established on the occupied territory must be evacuated.”
The agency quoted Riyad Mansour, the Permanent Representative of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, as praising the UN resolution and voting in favor of it.
The UN resolution comes two years after a war of extermination launched by Israel on Gaza since October 8, 2023, which resulted in the martyrdom of more than 70,000 Palestinians and the injury of more than 171,000 in the Gaza Strip, most of them children and women.
Simultaneously, the Israeli army killed 1,096 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, injured about 11,000 others, and arrested more than 21,000.
For decades, Israel has occupied territories in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, and refuses to withdraw from them and allow the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, on the pre-1967 borders.
