Israel working to prevent Palestinians from participating in UN arms treaty conference as full fledged state rather than observer.
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"Israel is actively working in key capitals around the world to prevent the Palestinians from participating in a UN arms trade treaty conference taking place in New York as a full-fledged state, and not merely as an observer, western diplomatic officials said Tuesday.
According to officials, Israel has lodged demarches in various capitals urging they work against seating the Palestinians as a state at the meeting, which aims to hammer out a binding treaty to regulate the global weapons market. The officials said Israel has let it be known that it would block the results of the treaty if the Palestinians were granted state status.
The treaty must be approved unanimously, so any one country can effectively override the deal. However, such a veto could eventually be bypassed by a two-thirds majority vote in the UN General Assembly.
What this move shows is that the Palestinians have not given up on pursuing UN membership or on the unilateral UN track, one Western official said.
The maneuvering at the arms trade treaty conference comes just days after UNESCO listed the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as a World Heritage Site under the name Palestine. So far it is the only UN agency that has accepted the Palestinian delegation as representatives of a state."
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=276149