The General Assembly approved six pro-Palestinian resolutions over U.S. and Israeli objections, culminating the annual U.N. debate aimed at showing the world body's solidarity with Palestinian demands for an independent homeland. At the end of three days of speeches, the 192-member world body on Friday reaffirmed the U.N.'s responsibility regarding the Palestinian question and stressed the Palestinian peoples' right to self-determination and an independent state. In the key resolution on the «Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine,» the General Assembly welcomed the Nov. 26 cease-fire in Gaza and urged both sides to maintain the truce which it said could pave the way for negotiations towards a solution to the conflict. The Palestinian U.N. observer, Riyad Mansour, said the vote _ 157 to 7 with 10 abstentions _ showed massive support in the international community for moving forward on the peace process. «The only way to reverse all the ills that we are witnessing in the Middle East is to accept the fact that there can only be a negotiated solution to the question of Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict,» Mansour told the assembly on Thursday. «It is unfortunate to say, at the least, that each time the Arabs have extended their hand, it was violently rejected by Israel.» The resolutions are not legally binding _ as Security Council resolutions are _ but they are a reflection of world opinion. Each of the six resolution received more than 100 «yes» votes. The United States, Israel, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau voted against all six resolutions. The only other resolution to top 150 «yes» votes declared any attempt to impose Israel's laws, jurisdiction and administration on Jerusalem illegal, and therefore null and void. It was approved by a vote of 157-6 with 10 abstentions. The other resolutions demanded that Israel withdraw from the Golan Heights and supported the U.N. Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, the U.N. Secretariat's Division for Palestinian Rights, and the U.N.'s special information program on the question of Palestine. Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari accused the U.S. of using its veto in the Security Council to protect its Israeli friends and prevent them from complying with U.N. resolutions, the Associated Press reported. After the vote in favor of the Golan Heights resolution _107-6 with 60 abstentions _ Ja'afari thanked members for their support for Syria's right to retrieve its land occupied by Israel in 1967. He appealed for a just peace and for the liberation of the Golan Heights.
