Loading ...Pathbreakers of Arab America—Riyad Mansour
By: John Mason / Arab America Contributing Writer
This is the seventy-fifth of Arab America’s series on American pathbreakers of Arab descent. The series includes personalities from entertainment, business, sports, science, arts, academia, journalism, and politics, among other areas. Our seventy-fifth pathbreaker, Dr. Riyad Mansour, is a Ramallah-born Palestinian American who has been a champion of Palestinian rights and presently serves as the third Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations.
Experiencing an atypical upbringing, one of seven Ramallah-born children, Palestinian American Riyad Mansour rises to the heights of diplomacy in support of Palestinians
Riyad Mansour was born on May 21, 1947, in Ramallah, Mandatory Palestine, one of seven children. Mansour’s father moved to the United States in the 1950s as a refugee and became a steelworker in Ohio. He later sent for his seven children from the West Bank. Little could be discovered about the mother of these seven children. Riad received his Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy and Master of Science in education counseling from Youngstown State University and a Ph.D. in counseling from the University of Akron. In 2002, Mansour was an adjunct professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Central Florida.
Riyad began his diplomatic career after working in business and academia, becoming the Deputy Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations from 1983 to 1994. Following that appointment, he served as Permanent Observer. These titles reflect the rejection of Palestine’s membership in the UN as a full member. Following the same line of impermanency, in 2005, President of the Palestinian National Authority Mahmoud Abbas appointed Mansour to succeed Nasser al-Qudwa as Permanent Observer for Palestine to the UN.
Under Mansour, the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations changed from an “entity” to a “non-Member Observer State” on 29 November 2012. Since then, Riyad has been referred to in more supportive circles as Ambassador and Permanent Observer to the State of Palestine to the UN. He has the rank of Minister of the State of Palestine and Chairman of the Group of 77 and China at the UN since January 2019.
Mansour does not hold back in his language of support for his people. As Palestine’s envoy to the UN Security Council, according to MaktoobMedia, he recently told his fellow diplomats, “We will not disappear.” On November 23, 2024, in the context of the Gaza war, Riyad made an impassioned speech, imploring the UN Security Council to take urgent action to tackle the hunger crisis in Gaza.
Beseeching the UN Council, Mansour extolled, per ‘The UN World Forum,’ “Let us pause and understand what it means that Israel has decided and implemented famine as a method of war for the purposes of ethnic cleansing and to advance its colonial objectives. Everything we warned against, everything Israel denied, is happening before our eyes,” he added. “We are at the last stages of an orchestrated plan to empty wide areas of Gaza from its Palestinian population.”
Mansour further rejected Israeli plans to annex the occupied West Bank. He implored, “Palestinian people are faced with death, dispossession, and displacement yet again, but once again… we will not disappear,” he said. “We are rooted in our land as the olive trees.” Reinforcing Mansour’s pleas to help the Palestinians during Israel’s attack on Gaza, the UN’s humanitarian assistance chief told the Security Council that the world is “witnessing acts reminiscent of the gravest international crimes in Gaza” as Israel dismisses warnings of famine in the enclave as “dishonest” and “slanderous.” Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed at least 43,665 Palestinians and wounded 103,076 since October 7, 2023.
Mansour laments the diminished role of U.S. support of Palestinian statehood and beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza
A 2022 initiative, resolution 262, called on the UN Security Council to meet within 10 days if the veto was used by one of its permanent members – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States – who are granted this extraordinary voting power. Perhaps, not surprisingly, during a Council meeting in April 2022, the U.S. vetoed a draft resolution recommending that the General Assembly hold a vote to allow Palestine full UN membership.
The result of that vote by the U.S. is that as a “Permanent Observer State” at the UN, Palestine can participate in all UN proceedings, with the significant exception that it cannot vote on draft resolutions and decisions in the UN’s principal organs and bodies. Mansour has become deeply embroiled in UN issues involving the ongoing war in Gaza, sparked by the bloody 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel. The problem concerned how the two central bodies of the UN General Assembly and Security Council should create the opportunity to “deliberate on how the two main organs of the United Nations … can work together to achieve a comprehensive just and lasting solution to the Palestinian question.”
U.S. representation at the UN has denied that America is against Palestinian statehood. While it approves such statehood, it does not favor it on the Security Council. The U.S. position is that the Palestinian Authority must “undertake necessary reforms,” noting that “Hamas, a ‘terrorist organization,’ is currently exerting power and influence in Gaza, an integral part of the State envisioned in this resolution.”
Washington presumably supports a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians, that the negative vote “does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood but instead is an acknowledgment that it will only come from direct negotiations between the parties.” Mansour, meanwhile, in addressing the UN General Assembly plenary meeting on the use of the veto on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question, averred, “Palestine’s UN membership is long overdue.” He said he stood before the General Assembly “as the massacres against the Palestinian people continue unabated.” Mansour furthermore said, “We will never accept that the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, to statehood, and admission to the UN could be in any way subject to an Israeli veto.”
Yet another biting issue Dr. Mansour has addressed is Israel’s banning of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA), a body designed specifically to serve Palestinian health, nutrition, and education needs. Israel accused UNWRA of harboring Hamas members, an accusation that revealed a minuscule number of Hamas members working in an organization of thousands. Mansour spoke to the Security Council, insisting that its absence would heighten instability and deepen despair in the occupied Palestinian territory. Supporting Mansour’s statement, the head of UNWRA reported, “Curtailing our operations now – outside a political process, and when trust in the international community is so low – will undermine the ceasefire. It will sabotage Gaza’s recovery and political transition.” He noted that 70,000 patients and 1,000 students will lose access to health and education services.
While the U.S. UN representative insisted that alternative organizations could replace UNWRA’s functions, other members insisted, “We all rely on UNRWA’s logistical capacity.” They painted a grim picture of Gaza’s post-war landscape, “where 87 percent of homes have been damaged or destroyed, alongside schools, roads, and hospitals.” They also noted that 1.34 million people urgently need emergency shelter support.
Palestine: A ‘sacred bond’ exists between a people and their land
We praise Dr. Riyad Mansour, an Arab American who has dedicated much of his professional life to promoting Palestinians and Palestine. He eloquently described his perceptions and feelings:
“Israel has destroyed everything in Gaza, except the sacred bond between a people and their land…Their roots run too deep. Their history covers millennia. The wounds of their Nakba [expulsion from ancestral lands in 1948] are yet to heal. So, by the hundreds of thousands, they are going back to the north from which they were uprooted and expelled by the occupying power.”
May these words echo as long as Palestinians are in quest of their roots
Sources:
–”Riyad Mansour,” Wikipedia Series on Arab Americans, 2024
–“Riyad H. Mansour, Ambassador; PhD; Minister, Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations,” The World Forum, 2025
–“Palestine: UN membership long overdue’–The Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine, Riyad Mansour,” UN News, 4/18/2024
–“We will not disappear’: Palestine’s UN envoy tells Security Council,” MaktoobMedia, 11/23/2024
–“UNRWA cannot be replaced by any other of the humanitarian organizations on the ground,” UN News, 1/25/2025
John Mason, Ph.D., focuses on Arab culture, society, and history and is the author of LEFT-HANDED IN AN ISLAMIC WORLD: An Anthropologist’s Journey into the Middle East, New Academia Publishing, 2017. HJohn Mason, Ph.D., focuses on Arab culture, society, and history and is the author of LEFT-HANDED IN AN ISLAMIC WORLD: An Anthropologist’s Journey into the Middle East, New Academia Publishing, 2017. He has taught at the University of Libya, Benghazi, Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and the American University in Cairo; John served with the United Nations in Tripoli, Libya, and consulted extensively on socioeconomic and political development for USAID and the World Bank in 65 countries.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab America. The reproduction of this article is permissible with proper credit to Arab America and the author.
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