Sunday, 22 December 2024
Sunday, 22 December 2024
There is no right to mass killing of civilians. There is no right to starve an entire civilian population.
There is no right to forcibly displace a people. And there is no right to annexation. This is what Israel is doing in Gaza.
These are its war objectives. This is what the absence of a ceasefire is allowing it to continue doing. This full-fledged Israeli assault against the Palestinian people and the Palestinian land is about everything except the hostages.
If the families of hostages can see that, how can anyone in this room claim otherwise? A ceasefire will allow to save lives, all lives. This was true a year ago. This is even more true today.
A ceasefire doesn't resolve everything, but it is the first step towards resolving anything. And what is the answer of those who are still unwilling now, after all this death and destruction, not to call for an unconditional ceasefire? Is it to accept that the killing should continue until we resolve everything while we watch that we are resolving nothing? We heard over and over again statements in this chamber by all members without distinction about protection of civilians, about rejecting forcible displacement, about rejecting starving the Palestinian population, about rejecting annexation, about rejecting wanton destruction, about rejecting regional escalation. Everyone around this table agreed on these objectives, and yet here we are, 44,000 Palestinians killed.
This is those who are accounted for. Many more are not accounted for. One day we will retrieve them in mass graves under the rubbles, and we will discover the real numbers of this horror.
And there will be many that we will never retrieve. Famine that is looming all over Gaza, that is a reality in northern Gaza. Two million people displaced, still hunted even when they are in tents.
Total destruction of Gaza and all the requirements of life in it. And war on Lebanon, its people and its sovereignty. What does it mean to proclaim all these principles, we reject, we reject, we reject, and then shield Israel of the consequences of its actions, thus allowing it to do exactly what we are asking it to stop doing.
Madam President, the world should not grow accustomed to the death of Palestinians, to seeing Palestinian children starving, to seeing mothers carrying their children from one place to another forcibly displaced. They should not get accustomed to seeing journalists killed and humanitarians killed, to see Palestinians detained, abducted, carried on trucks, to go be tortured, sexually abused, and raped. The fact we are Palestinians does not make that less shocking or less outrageous.
Maybe for some we have the wrong nationality, the wrong faith, the wrong skin color. But we are humans, and we should be treated as such. Is there a UN Charter for Israel that is different from the Charter you all have? Tell us.
Is there an international law for them, an international law for us? Do they have the right to kill, and the only right we have is to die? What the hell does Israel need to do more for this council to act under Chapter 7? What more can they do for this council to act under Chapter 7? Or will this council be the last place on earth that cannot recognize a threat to peace when they see it, when it is so glaring, so undeniable? You are witnessing the attempt to annihilate a nation, destroy a nation. It is not even hidden. It is in plain sight.
And yet the very tools designed to respond to these situations are not being used. So which one is it? Are Palestinian lives not worth saving, or does Israel have a license to kill? Can this council only adopt resolutions and then witness their blatant breach? This self-inflicted powerlessness has to stop. And like Algeria, we repeat, the resolutions of this council are binding.
Their role is to be enforced. Their role is to change reality, not to record violations for history's purposes and then allow them to continue. Had diplomatic efforts succeeded, we would not be here.
We recognize all the efforts that were done, all the diplomatic efforts that were conducted. And yet we have to recognize children are still starving in Gaza. Families are being killed.
Communities are being obliterated. Had these efforts succeeded, we would not be here. But what we cannot accept is that Israel has a veto that blocks any attempts to put an end to this war, especially when we know what are its true intentions.
Madam President, many peoples, many governments around the world are saying the right things and trying to do the right things. And we have here to express our gratitude to the E10 for their relentless efforts for over a year now and in the recent month. We all were hoping that 2735 would lead to a ceasefire.
And we can discuss who is responsible for that ceasefire not occurring. For us, it is pretty clear that Israel had never an intention to accept a ceasefire and has found every reason not to have a ceasefire. We thank Guyana for its efforts in coordinating the E10 initiative.
We thank all of those who have voted in favor of this resolution. And we agree with Malta and with Algeria. This is the bare minimum.
This is the bare minimum that morality, humanity, legality would plead for. And this bare minimum, even this bare minimum, was vetoed. I truly do not understand.
You're saying we cannot be for an unconditional ceasefire. What that means in effect now is that we are for a war. You're saying we cannot be for an unconditional ceasefire that does not release the hostages.
Is this war releasing the hostages? Is it even trying to release the hostages? So what does it mean? We accept this war that is killing hostages and that is killing, maiming, terrorizing, destroying an entire nation. When is it enough? When is it the point where we say no? We mean ceasefire now. Now.
We will not allow you to not listen to us, to ignore us, to insult us, to play games with us. This resolution is trying to restore life, to save lives. It's not a dangerous message.
The draft resolution is not a dangerous message. This veto is a dangerous message to Israel that it can continue executing its plans, the very plans you oppose. And the messages we send do matter.
And that is the wrong message at the worst possible time. Israel is responsible for the Palestinian civilians it kills. It cannot be absolved of that responsibility.
It is killing them purposefully, deliberately, repeatedly, massively. It is starving them on purpose. Nobody can deny it.
We sat in this room, we heard every UN agency, every testimony, every NGO, Palestinian, Israeli, international, saying the same things. This is by design. What does it mean? That the release of the hostages should be unconditional? This is what the Council has said repeatedly now for a year.
The release of hostages should be unconditional. But stopping killing Palestinians is conditional? There are acceptable conditions to stop the mass killing of Palestinians? There's 100 Israeli hostages and there's 2 million Palestinians in Gaza. 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.
They deserve better. They deserve respect for their lives, for their suffering. Israel will always claim conditions have not been met because its plans require it to continue this war, to annex the land and destroy the people.
And therefore we can no longer accept its conditions. 14 months and we are still debating if a genocide must be stopped. There's no justification.
No justification whatsoever for vetoing a resolution trying to stop atrocities. No justification for that. Madam President, one day someone will dig up these meetings, the records of them, will see us pleading for the lives of our people over and over and over and over again.
And they will try to understand why our calls were not heeded. They will look at the people who sat around this table and spoke and addressed you from all over the world to call on the Council to take action. They will read what everybody here has said.
And then they will wonder how a genocide displayed on TVs known to the whole world was able to continue for this long. They will wonder if the whole world is against the mass killing, against the displacement, against the starvation, against the annexation, how come they all occurred? It is because we are allowed to speak about the rules, but not to enforce them. Because we can regret and reject, but not act.
There are many states now stepping up to change this reality. We call on all states and all peoples to stand for life, for freedom, and for peace. We are out of time.
We repeat, we are against harming any civilians. And we have more than our share of grievances. We could have sat here and tried to justify harming civilians.
We never did. Not one day. And we're still sitting here after tens of thousands of our people have been killed.
Many have been detained. All have been traumatized. All have been displaced.
We have many reasons to say otherwise. And yet we remain steadfast. There is no reason, no reason to harm civilians, regardless of their nationality, their origin, regardless of the circumstances.
But our civilians, what about our civilians? They are worthy of protection. Their lives should be saved. People cannot sit and demand Palestinian pacifism under all circumstances and enable Israeli militarism.
That cannot be done. Either you believe violence is an impasse, you believe there are no military solutions, and then you act for peaceful ones and you reject military ones, or you let it be military. We are for a peaceful path.
Even after all that has happened, we are for a peaceful path. Help us short it, not block it. Stop them.
Help us. You would be helping Palestinians and Israelis in our region and the world. Madam President, there is a world out there where Palestinian children are able to grow.
We are not born to be occupied and killed and displaced. That's not our destiny. That's not our fate.
There is a world where we could live and grow and see our children grow with no occupation, no bombs, no tents, no settlements, no walls, no military checkpoints, no prisons, no constant humiliation, no oppression, no house demolished, no amputations, and the fact we are not means that many, many more Palestinians will suffer and others will suffer. We are trying to get there. We are trying to find a path that leads us there to freedom, to life, and to peace.
That should be our common objective. There is a world where there is no war in the Middle East, where Palestinians and Israeli civilians go about their lives, where maybe they can look confidently towards the future and even envisage more bridges between them, where our region unleashes its true and full potential for the benefit of all states and all peoples. It's this future that is being destroyed before our very eyes, and the entire Palestinian civilian population is the primary victim.
Madam President, we call on the General Assembly to uphold the responsibilities that the Council has failed to uphold owing to the U.S. veto. We call on all states to use all available tools to stop the massacres. What this resolution was calling for is an unconditional end to massacres, and that is always worth supporting.
