It’s not just UNESCO: The Palestinians’ top envoy in Geneva said on Nov 1 he believes that joining the UN agency for culture, education and science will “open the door” to joining 16 other UN agencies within weeks. Ibrahim Khraishi, the top Palestinian envoy at the UN in Geneva, reportedly said that Palestinian diplomats are now planning to capitalise on Monday’s landslide vote to allow the Palestinians into UNESCO by preparing papers to join the other UN agencies and a variety of other international organisations. “Now we are studying when we are going to move for full membership on the other UN agencies,” Khraishi said. “It’s our target for (us to join) the international organisations and the UN agencies.”
He said the UNESCO vote sets a precedent to allowing such broad memberships.
“We are working on it, one by one,” he said. “Because it’s now precedent that we are a full member in one of the biggest and one of the most important UN agencies, UNESCO. So it will open the door for us now to go further in our efforts to join other UN agencies.”