KARACHI: Pakistan has expressed support for a “historic” call by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to admit the state of Palestine as a full member, the Foreign Office (FO) in Islamabad said on Friday, urging the UN Security Council to decide the matter “favorably.”

The UNGA last week overwhelmingly backed a Palestinian bid to become a full UN member by recognizing it was qualified to join and recommending the UNSC “reconsider the matter favorably.” The vote by the 193-member General Assembly was a global survey of support for the Palestinian bid to become a full UN member — a move that would effectively recognize a Palestinian state — after the United States vetoed it in the UN Security Council last month.

“Pakistan supports the historic call made by the UN general assembly made at the 10th emergency session to admit the state of Palestine as a full member,” FO spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch told reporters at a weekly press briefing.

“The resolution determined that the state of Palestine is qualified for membership of the UN and recommended the security council to decide the matter favorably.”

Baloch said the UNSC had been provided another opportunity to lift its objections to the admission of Palestine to the UN and “restore the credibility of the assurances that have been given in support of the two-state solution.”

The Palestinian push for full UN membership comes seven months into a war between Israel and Palestinian group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and as Israel is expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank, which the UN considers illegal.

Palestinian health authorities say Israel’s ground and air campaign in Gaza has killed more than 35,000 people, mostly civilians after the war broke on Oct 7 when Hamas fighters stormed across the border into Israel.

Pakistan does not recognize the state of Israel and calls for an independent Palestinian state based on internationally agreed parameters and the pre-1967 borders with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital.