Against a background of increasing Israeli attacks and creeping annexation, Pakistan has called for negotiations to find peaceful solution that would end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and pave the way for an independent State of Palestine, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital.
“The perpetuation of Israeli occupation will not bring peace to the Holy Land,” Ambassador Aamir Khan, deputy permanent representative of Pakistan to the United Nations, told the UN General assembly on Wednesday, while reaffirming Pakistan’s solidarity with the Palestinian people.
“If history is a guide, even if they are dispossessed and disempowered by Israel, every succeeding generation of Palestinians will persist in seeking their freedom and fundamental rights, including their right to self-determination,” he said in the course of a debate on the Question of Palestine.
The Pakistani envoy said that Israel’s unilateral actions, including illegal settlements, demolitions and evictions, are grave violations of international human rights law which are hampering hopes for peace.
“We condemn the killing and wounding of Palestinians, including women and children by Israel, the occupying power,” Aamir Khan said, adding, “International community is obliged, morally and legally, to bring this deplorable situation to an end.”
He underscored the work of UNRWA, which is mandated to care for Palestinian refugees, saying political and financial support for the agency is just one way to show solidarity with them.
“We call for the establishment of a viable, independent and contiguous State of Palestine, on the basis of internationally agreed parameters, the pre-1967 borders, and with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital,” the Pakistani envoy added.
Opening the debate, Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer for the State of Palestine, said that Israeli exceptionalism has only emboldened Israel’s worst instincts.
Today, he said, the 193-member Assembly will finally acknowledge the historical injustice that befell the Palestinian people, adopting a resolution that decides to commemorate in the Assembly Hall the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Nakba.
There is no two-State solution without a sovereign and independent State of Palestine based on the pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Anybody serious about the two-State solution must help salvage the Palestinian State and recognize it now without further delay, Mansour said, stressing that justice in Palestine would mean that the international law-based order has triumphed over impunity and double standards.
