Issues relating to the State of Palestine and aspects of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict occupy continuous debates, resolutions, and resources at the United Nations.

During this war, resolution 194 reiterated the UN's claim on Jerusalem and resolved in paragraph 11 "that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date".

The Arab states initially opposed this resolution, but within a few months, began to change their position, and became the strongest advocates of its refugee and territorial provisions.

[12][13][14] Following the failure at Lausanne to settle the problem of the Arab refugees, UNRWA was created with December 1949 resolution 302 (IV) to provide humanitarian aid to this group.

Egyptian president Anwar Sadat is credited for initiating the process, following the failure of the UN-mediated peace negotiations, notably the Geneva Conference.

The secret negotiations at Camp David in 1978 between Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter, and the treaty itself essentially bypassed UN-approved channels.

In protest, the General Assembly did not renew the peace-keeping force in the Sinai peninsula, the UNEF II,[19] despite requests by the US, Egypt, and Israel, as stipulated in the treaty.

The Court cited illegal interference by the government of Israel with the Palestinian's national right to self-determination; and land confiscations, house demolitions, the creation of enclaves, and restrictions on movement and access to water, food, education, health care, work, and an adequate standard of living in violation of Israel's obligations under international law.

[22] The UN Fact-Finding Mission and several UN Rapporteurs subsequently noted that in the movement and access policy there has been a violation of the right not to be discriminated against based on race or national origin.

It generated a series of changes: the sidelining of Yasser Arafat and the unilateral withdrawal of Jewish settlers and the Israeli forces from occupied territories, notably the Gaza strip.

"The representative of the United States (...) expressed disappointment with the request for a recorded vote because that could send a signal that there was no consensus on the issues at stake, which was not the case.

[31] In February 2011, the United States vetoed a draft resolution to condemn all Jewish settlements established in the occupied Palestinian territory since 1967 as illegal.

In addition to granting Palestine "non-member observer state status", the draft resolution "expresses the hope that the Security Council will consider favorably the application submitted on 23 September 2011 by the State of Palestine for admission to full membership in the United Nations, endorses the two-state solution based on the pre-1967 borders, and stresses the need for an immediate resumption of negotiations between the two parties."

On Thursday, 29 November 2012, In a 138–9 vote (with 41 abstaining) General Assembly resolution 67/19 adopted, upgrading Palestine to "non-member observer state" status in the United Nations.

– discuss] On 10 May 2024, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution that recognized that Palestine met the requirements for UN membership, and requested that the Security Council reconsider admitting the state.

[53] United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 of 2016 "Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Council every three months on the implementation of the provisions of the present resolution;"[54][55] In the first of these reports, delivered verbally at a security council meeting on 24 March 2017, United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, noted that Resolution 2334 called on Israel to take steps to cease all settlement activity in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, that "no such steps have been taken during the reporting period" and that instead, there had been a marked increase in statements, announcements and decisions related to construction and expansion.

Although her delegation agreed with many of the concerns expressed in the draft resolution, the text contained language which might be interpreted as endorsing violence and condoning terrorism.

She condemned as "despicable" Hamas's violence against its own people, its use of Palestinian children as pawns, and its indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilian areas, and called it one of the greatest obstacles to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu castigated the UNHRC's decision stating: "He represents an organization that indiscriminately targets children and grown-ups, and women and men.

Israel's ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, denounced the speech, stating that Hamas was an internationally recognized terrorist organization that targeted civilians.

"Inviting a Hamas terrorist to lecture to the world about human rights is like asking Charles Manson to run the murder investigation unit at the NYPD", he said.

Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Ireland President Mary Robinson refused to head the mission because she "felt strongly that the Council's resolution was one-sided and did not permit a balanced approach to determine the situation on the ground.

[90] The next day, he wrote in the New York Times "I accepted because the mandate of the mission was to look at all parties: Israel; Hamas, which controls Gaza; and other armed Palestinian groups.

[102] This delay is attributed to diplomatic pressure from Western members of the council, including the US which joined in April 2009 and, surprisingly, from the Palestinian Authority representative.

[108] The "unbalanced focus" of the ratification was criticized by U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly,[109] U.S. ambassador to the UNHRC Douglas Griffiths and Richard Goldstone himself.

[111] On 14 April 2011 the three other co-authors of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict of 2008–2009, Hina Jilani, Christine Chinkin and Desmond Travers, released a joint statement criticizing Goldstone's recantation of this aspect of the report.

[114] The alleged anti-Israel bias in the mandate of the commission was denounced by Gregory J. Wallance in The Guardian[115] and by the US, Canadian and Australian delegates to the UNHRC during the debate of the resolution.

[117]Jean Ziegler, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, published in October 2003 a report[118] accusing Israel of starving Palestinian children.

Delegates from some Arab countries had claimed that Mansour's initiative would be interpreted as an official UN condemnation of Hamas, and would gain Israel international legitimacy for cutting electricity and fuel supplies to Gaza.

"[123] Between May and September 2007, the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon became the center of fighting between the Lebanese Internal Security Force and Fatah al-Islam gunmen.