United Nations (Agencies): Palestine’s Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) Riyad Mansour has called on the UN Security Council to respond to Israeli aggression in Gaza with sanctions.
“Israel continues taking human lives and every action possible to spread wildfires across the Middle East as we sit here on the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions,” Mansour said during an emergency session of the 15-member Council on Tuesday.
The meeting convened by Algeria, the only Arab member in the Council, after Israel carried out a deadly airstrike on a Gaza school sheltering displaced Palestinians, killing more than 100 people.
“Let me state the obvious. Israel does not care about your condemnations…It dismisses your resolutions. It does not even listen to your debates,” Mansour said, pointing to Israeli envoy Gilad Erdan, who was checking his phone when the Palestinian ambassador was making his speech in the Council.
“Their representative will be playing with his iPhone while you are talking,” Mansour remarked. He said there was nothing that can justify Israeli actions against Palestinians.
What was happening in Gaza is not “about the hostages. It became apparent long ago that this Israeli government could care less about them.”
“(Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu has other priorities, self-serving ones, maniacal ones,” he added. Mansour urged the Security Council to “Wake up” and continued: “Stop imagining that you can reason with the Israeli government so it stops killing civilians by thousands, imposing famine, torturing prisoners, colonizing and annexing our land, all while you appeal to them, call on them, demand them to stop.”
Calling on the Council members to not abandon their duties and use the tools they have to implement actions, the Palestinian envoy asked: “When will the Israeli government be held accountable for its actions?”
He demanded that “it is time to sanction” those Israelis responsible for reported war crimes and said: “When are you going to enforce your decisions and international law? You need to impose sanctions on those criminals.”
Mansour also announced that Palestine “will go to the General Assembly to make sure that it upholds its charter responsibilities, to make sure that the determinations of the highest court in the world, the International Court of Justice, is translated into political will and momentum and to concrete actions to be pursued by the UN and its member states to end this illegal action as soon as possible.”
Opening the debate, senior UN officials on Tuesday called once more for an immediate ceasefire and conditions which would allow full humanitarian access for the suffering people.
“(The Israeli attack) pointed once again to the desperate need to reach a ceasefire, free the hostages and scale up humanitarian aid,” Rosemary DiCarlo, Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, told the council.
The attack was also “far from an isolated incident”, Lisa Doughten, Director of Partnerships at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), added.
“These large-scale incidents are, sadly, only some of the myriad ways in which this horrendous conflict is causing unbearable suffering and devastation,” Ms.
In her briefing, Ms. DiCarlo noted that as hostilities continue across the Strip, the situation remains catastrophic.
“No place is safe in Gaza, yet civilians continue to be ordered to evacuate to ever shrinking areas,” she said. She also highlighted escalating regional tensions, especially along the Blue Line that separates Israeli and Lebanese armed forces.
