Palestinians basked in the joy of their historic U.N. bid on Saturday, but difficult questions about the move's consequences and the future of their dream of statehood remained.

On Friday night, tens of thousands of people packed into the centers of cities across the West Bank to cheer their president Mahmoud Abbas as he urged the United Nations General Assembly to approve the membership request.

U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Maura Connelly informed Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi of her country’s disappointment with his recent statements, reported As Safir on Saturday.

Al-Rahi had recently stated that Hizbullah’s arms are a product of the Israeli occupation, which sparked Connelly’s consternation.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon encouraged on Thursday Lebanon to invest in its natural resources that are located in areas that are not under dispute, reported As Safir newspaper on Saturday.

It revealed that Ban “surprised” the Lebanese delegation in New York by bringing up the issue of U.N. Security Council resolution 1559, especially regarding the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon.

The Palestinians' attempt to get the U.N. Security Council to recognize their statehood is headed towards a "dead end", France's Foreign Minister Alain Juppe warned Friday in a television interview.

Separately, Juppe's spokesman said France's suggestion that Palestine be given an intermediate status as a United Nations observer nation remained on the table, despite what he said were "Israeli reservations".

Israel on Friday rejected a proposal by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to upgrade the Palestinians' U.N. status and admit them as a non-member state, a foreign ministry spokesman said.

"This may seem like a good idea on the surface but in reality you can't cut corners by giving the Palestinians a state, however you describe it, which does not come from an agreement with Israel," Yigal Palmor told Agence France Presse.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon reiterated his support for the work of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon during talks with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman on the sidelines of the General Assembly meeting in New York.

Ban’s office said Thursday the U.N. secretary-general reiterated his call on the Lebanese government to implement all its obligations with regard to the tribunal, which was set up to try ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s suspected assassins.

A Hizbullah member escaped to Israel last June after the Shiite party’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah unveiled that the group had captured three spies among its members, two of whom were allegedly recruited by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, An Nahar daily reported Friday.

Nasrallah said at the time that CIA members at the U.S. embassy had recruited at least two Hizbullah members and the group was investigating whether the intelligence agency or another foreign agency recruited a third.

Israel on Friday will raise its level of security alertness in case unrest accompanies Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's application for U.N. membership for a Palestinian state, police said.

"We will be heightening security by one level in general. This is being coordinated by the military, border police and Israel police," police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld told Agence France Presse.

Around 1,000 Palestinians gathered in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Thursday to protest against U.S. President Barack Obama's speech to the United Nations.

The protesters carried signs deriding the United States and Obama for his address, in which he reiterated his opposition to the Palestinians' attempt to win U.N. membership for their state, saying there was no "shortcut" to peace.

Palestinians on Thursday slammed U.S. President Barack Obama's address to the U.N. General Assembly, calling it a display of U.S. bias towards Israel.

Commentators, politicians and ordinary Palestinians alike said Obama's speech on Wednesday, just days before the Palestinians apply to become a U.N. member state, showed Washington was incapable of serving as a fair broker between Israel and the Palestinians.