UNITED NATIONS (Dispatches) -- The United States vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution on Thursday that would have allowed Palestine to be admitted as a full member of the international body and effectively recognized its statehood.
The resolution needed at least nine votes to pass and no vetoes from the five permanent members - the United States, the UK, France, Russia and China.
The proposal received 12 votes in favor, while the UK and Switzerland abstained from voting.
Russia, China, France, Japan, South Korea, Ecuador, Algeria, Malta, Slovenia, Sierra Leone, Mozambique and Guyana all voted yes. The U.S. ultimately blocked the measure.
After vetoing the resolution, the U.S. deputy ambassador to the UN, Robert Wood, attempted to justify the decision and appeared to cast doubt on Palestine’s qualifications.
“We have long been clear that premature actions here in New York, even with the best intentions, will not achieve statehood for the Palestinian people,” Wood said.
“There are unresolved questions as to whether the applicant meets the criteria to be considered a state,” he said.
Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, lashed out at the U.S.’ decision, and said the veto showed what Washington “really thinks of the Palestinians.”
The U.S. thinks “they [the Palestinians] do not deserve to have their own state,” and it only realizes “the interest of Israel,” he said.
Nebenzia added that the U.S. was turning a blind eye to the “crimes of Israel” amid its ongoing assault on Gaza, as well as the continuation of the illegal settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian group Hamas, who just hours earlier said it would dismantle its armed wing after the creation of a Palestinian state, said the U.S. is standing “in the face of international will” by exercising its veto power.
The group said in a statement that it condemns “in the strongest terms the American position biased towards the occupation,” as it called on the international community “to exert pressure to go beyond the American will and support the struggle of our Palestinian people and their legitimate right to self-determination.”
“We assure the world that our Palestinian people will continue their struggle and resistance until they defeat the occupation, take away their rights, and establish their independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” the statement added.

A recent report by The Intercept claimed that prior to Thursday’s vote, Washington was lobbying other countries to reject the resolution on Palestinian statehood.
“It remains the U.S. view that the most expeditious path toward a political horizon for the Palestinian people is in the context of a normalization agreement between Israel and its neighbors,” a diplomatic cable dated April 12 reportedly said.
Earlier on Thursday, a report in Wall Street Journal said the Biden administration was pushing for a deal that would see Israel express a “new commitment to Palestinian statehood” in exchange for Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel.
South Africa’s deputy representative to the UN, Marthinus Van Schalkwyk, said the international community must avoid stiflling “the very existence of the State of Palestine.”
South Africa has been among the staunchest opponents of the Israeli war on Gaza, and has led the case before the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians in the besieged enclave, and requesting provisional measures to end the war.
On January 26, the ICJ issued provisional measures calling on Israel to refrain from impeding the delivery of aid into Gaza and improve the humanitarian situation. It also ordered Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent acts of genocide in the besieged enclave and to punish incitement to genocide.
Thursday’s vote came more than six months into Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which has martyred nearly 34,000 Palestinians and plunged the coastal enclave into a humanitarian catastrophe.
The latest food security report by a UN-backed initiative found that the entire population of Gaza, estimated to be around 2.3 million, is enduring “acute” food insecurity while half the population suffers from a greater level of food insecurity classified as “catastrophic”.