PARIS — France will vote in favor of the Palestinians’ request to heighten their profile at the United Nations, the French foreign minister told Parliament on Tuesday, embracing a move that Israel and the United States oppose.
The support of France, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, is the most significant boost to date for the Palestinians’ hopes to be granted nonmember observer status and thus greater international recognition. Russia and China, two other permanent members, have also thrown their support behind the Palestinian bid.
The French support appeared calculated to strengthen the position of the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, whose party governs the West Bank, after fighting with Israel in the Gaza Strip this month that left Hamas, the Islamic militant organization that oversees Gaza, ascendant.
The French announcement is also a blow to Israel, whose diplomats have been working feverishly to try to ensure what they call a “moral majority” in the U.N. vote, meaning that even if a majority of nations vote in favor of the Palestinian bid, the major world powers would not.
Speaking before the lower house of Parliament, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said, “Next Thursday or Friday, when the question is asked, France will reply, ‘Yes.’”
Muhammad Shtayyeh, the Palestinian special envoy for the U.N. bid, issued a statement from New York say- ing: “We are very thankful to France and we call upon other European governments to announce their support for Palestinian freedom. This is long overdue.”
The two other permanent members of the Security Council are the United States and Britain. In a statement last week, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, said the Palestinian bid jeopardized the Mideast peace process.
“While there is any chance of achieving a return to talks in the coming months,” he said, “we continue to advise President Abbas against attempts to win Palestinian observer state status at the United Nations through a vote in the U.N. General Assembly. We judge that this would make it harder to secure a return to negotiations, and could have very serious consequences for the Palestinian Authority.”
Ilana Stein, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said Israel was “not surprised” by the French declaration, adding, “Of course, we remain in our opinion that this is a very harmful initiative by the Palestinians; our opinion has not changed.”
The draft resolution “reaffirms the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to independence in their state of Palestine on the basis of the pre-1967 borders,” according to a version that circulated earlier this month.
It also expresses “the urgent need for the resumption and acceleration of negotiations within the Middle East peace process” and states that the permanent borders of a Palestinian state are “to be determined in final status negotiations.”
The Palestinians believe that broader recognition of its U.N. presence is a crucial step to a two-state solution with Israel, given the absence of any other progress.
But the Palestinians have become vaguer about other issues, stating in a recent official document that enhanced status would “enable Palestine to better use the U.N. and other international forums to advance its just cause for freedom and independence” and help the Palestinians “to reinforce the international position that does not recognize Israel’s occupation and practices of colonization and annexation as legitimate.”
The Israelis are concerned that the Palestinians could use enhanced status to try to join other international bodies, such as the International Criminal Court, where they could pursue legal claims against Israel.
Israeli officials also view the Palestinian bid for enhanced status as a nonmember state as a violation of previous accords.
“This is in stark contrast to their commitment to resolve issues through negotiations,” said Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman.
While any vote supporting greater Palestinian status at the United Nations could help Abbas, a moderate, the Israeli concerns appear to have resonated in replies from other countries to the Palestinian bid.
A British official told the Financial Times that Britain was prepared to back the Palestinians but wanted three assurances: that the Palestinians would not then seek to join the International Criminal Court; that they would not follow with a bid for full membership; and that Abbas return to negotiations without conditions. And The Guardian newspaper reported Tuesday, citing unnamed government sources, that Britain “is prepared to back a key vote recognizing Palestinian statehood at the United Nations if Mahmoud Abbas pledges not to pursue Israel for war crimes and to resume peace talks.”
Just more than a year ago, France voted in favor of full Palestinian membership in UNESCO despite a mandated cutoff of U.S. funds to the organization. On Tuesday, Fabius called France’s position a point of “coherence,” saying, “The constant position of France has been to recognize the Palestinian state.”
President Francois Hollande, who has met with the leaders of both sides, has said France would support anything that would promote direct talks on a peace settlement. For that reason, before the latest Gaza clashes, France was reluctant to vote for Palestinian recognition, in part because the United States and Israel were so opposed to it as a sideshow.
But eight days of clashes, which left more than 160 Palestinians and six Israelis dead, also strengthened Hamas and further weakened Abbas, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and French officials clearly decided to reinforce him. The PLO, which does not include Hamas, remains the sole legal negotiating authority for the Palestinians, and if there is to be a peace settlement, it is Abbas and the PLO who must pursue it.
“The moment when this question will be proposed is a very delicate moment,” said Fabius, referring to the timing of the vote, soon after the recent fighting in the Gaza Strip. “At once because the cease-fire is extremely fragile, because there are Israeli elections, because there is a change in the composition of the American administration.”
Although U.N. recognition would be viewed by many as an implicit recognition of statehood, the “concrete expression of a Palestinian state” can come only through negotiations “without conditions” between Palestinians and Israel, Fabius added.
Last year, the Palestinians submitted an application to the Security Council to become a full member state of the United Nations, but the United States made clear that it would veto the request.
Husam Zumlot of the Fatah Foreign Relations Commission, which has been very active in lobbying in Europe in recent months, said, “We hope other European countries will follow.” He added that he believed that more than half of the countries of the European Union would vote in favor of the Palestinians.
Malta, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Portugal have said they will vote for the measure, but Germany and the Czech Republic are among the countries that have opposed the bid, and Spain’s prime minister said the nation would wait for a formal resolution to be presented, news agencies reported.
Australia has said it will abstain, the Australian media reported. None of the countries, however, has veto power.
Information for this article was contributed by Steven Erlanger, Isabel Kershner, Maia de la Baume and Aurelien Breeden of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/28/2012