Report advises against Palestinian statehood bid

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- A British professor who occasionally gives the Palestinians legal advice warned against their statehood bid next month at the United Nations, Ma'an reported.

A seven-page document from Guy-Goodwin Gill, obtained by Ma'an, states that an initiative to transfer Palestinian representation from the Palestinian Liberation Organization to a new state will terminate the legal status the PLO has had at the United Nations since 1975.

The news agency said the document asserts that if the Palestinians are recognized as a state, there will no longer be an institution that can represent the rights of all the Palestinian people in the United Nations and other international institutions.

Goodwin-Gill, a professor at Oxford University, says a change in status would severely deprive the right of refugees to return to their homes and properties from which they were displaced, the Ma'an report says.

"An actual state cannot be created in September, as Israel's occupation continues, so the debate is focused on whether membership should be requested from the Security Council or if the General Assembly should be asked to grant recognition of a state as an 'observer,' a status that conveys less than full U.N .membership," the news agency quoted the document as saying.

Goodwin-Gill was a member of the team that gained a 2004 non-binding ruling by the International Court of Justice that declared the security wall constructed by Israel that straddles the West Bank is illegal.