神马午夜福利网

10 September 2024

Agenda item 5

Illegal Israeli actions in Occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory

Identical letters dated 10 September 2024 from the Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General, the President of the General Assembly and the President of the Security Council

For over 11 months, Israel, the occupying Power, has waged genocide against the Palestinian people.

Israel’s actions, especially in the Gaza Strip, have systematically breached every prohibition of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) and every law known to humankind, whether under international humanitarian law or human rights law or the Charter of the United Nations, intended to protect civilians and avert the scourge of war.

Israel is waging this genocidal onslaught undeterred, fearing no consequences for its crimes and emboldened to replicate its atrocities in the rest of Occupied Palestine in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, where extremist Jewish settler militias maraud side by side with Israeli occupying forces in daily violent raids across the territory.

Eleven months on, Israeli soldiers, under direct command of government and military leaders, continue to mass murder, wound and maim, starve, displace and dispossess Palestinian civilians in a vengeful and lethal campaign of collective punishment, destruction and slaughter, knowingly and wantonly causing harm to defenceless children, women and men. Moreover, some Israeli officials and public figures are continuing their open incitement for annihilation of the Palestinian people. All in grave breach of the Genocide Convention.

The toll of victims continues to rise, the most recent being those killed in an Israeli air strike deliberately targeting a tent encampment for displaced civilians in al-Mawasi in southern Gaza near Khan Younis. The area had been designated a so?called “humanitarian zone” by Israel, and thousands of Palestinian civilians were forcibly transferred there, some with nowhere to place their makeshift tents to shelter their families other than at the edge of the sea, lacking any civilian infrastructure, deepening conditions of starvation and disease.

Preliminary reports indicate that at least 19 Palestinians were killed and more than 60 others wounded in this deadly strike, which obliterated some families in their entirety as they slept in their tents. More people are feared dead as rescue workers remain hindered by minimal capacity and equipment for recovery. With this massacre the casualty toll surpasses 41,020 Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza and over 94,925 Palestinians injured, the majority of the victims children and women.

Meanwhile, Israeli military assaults, including air strikes, have also surged across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, killing and injuring more Palestinian civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure. The latest is the assault and siege on both the city and refugee camp of Tulkarem in the northern West Bank, replicating the attack on Jenin, where Israeli occupying forces left behind a trail of death and destruction, killing at least 21 Palestinians and destroying an estimated 70 per cent of Jenin’s civilian infrastructure.

The victims of these latest Israeli attacks have included children, women, men, youth and elderly persons, among them seven children, the highest number of children killed in any one week since November 2023, and an 82-year-old Palestinian man who was murdered by Israeli soldiers in Jenin as he went to buy bread for his family. Israeli occupying forces and Israeli settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have killed at least 660 Palestinians, including 159 children, since October 2023.

Also among recent victims of this Israeli onslaught was a young Turkish-American woman, 26-year-old Ay?enur Eygi, who was murdered by an Israeli soldier as she attended a demonstration in the village of Beita, near Nablus. Witnesses affirm that Ms. Eygi was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper as she stood near an olive tree with other civilian protesters, who gather weekly for peaceful demonstrations against the illegal Israeli occupation and its confiscation and colonization of Palestinian land. She tragically became the eighteenth civilian protester killed by Israeli occupying forces in Beita since 2020.

We reiterate our calls for independent, transparent, international investigations for the killing of all civilians by Israeli occupying forces and settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, as well as our abiding calls for the effective pursuit and realization of accountability for all of these crimes and justice for every single victim. This must include accountability through the judicial organs of the United Nations, both the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The failure to ensure accountability will only further embolden this depraved, immoral occupying Power. It should be obvious to all by now that Israel is waging this punitive, bloodthirsty war against the Palestinian civilian population trapped under its illegal occupation with absolutely no regard for international law. On the contrary, it is shredding the law and has zero respect for the authority of the United Nations, including the Security Council, and for the global demands for a ceasefire and a halt to its war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Even the ICJ advisory opinion concerning the illegality of Israel’s occupation has been met with total contempt by Israeli leaders and open threats of retribution against any who would endorse the Court’s ruling and seek action to implement its determinations in respect of universal obligations under international law.

There must be an end to this impunity. Israel, the occupying Power, must bear the costs – politically, legally, financially and morally – for all of its illegal actions. Only accountability can pressure an end to such flagrant and destructive criminality.

It is long past time for the Security Council to demand and impose a ceasefire and to act to implement its own resolutions. It is long past time for action for accountability in the face of continued Israeli defiance. This must include concrete measures, including sanctions and an arms embargo, through collective action, including via the General Assembly in respect of the ICJ advisory opinion and of its own countless resolutions, towards ensuring accountability, bringing an end to all of Israel’s violations and crimes against the Palestinian people and a complete and rapid end to its illegal occupation and finally enabling the Palestinian people to realize their inalienable rights, including to self-determination and independence.

We urge the international community to act now, swiftly and responsibly. Every day that we fail to act to uphold international law sentences so many innocent Palestinian children, women and men to untold misery and torment, depriving them of all of their human rights, including their right to life. We must act to protect and save them and save their future, which is under direct threat by Israel’s genocidal war and its illegal colonial occupation and apartheid regime.

The present letter is in follow-up to our 847 letters on the ongoing crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, which constitutes the territory of the State of Palestine. These letters, dated from 29 September 2000 () to 29 August 2024 (), constitute a basic record of the crimes being committed by Israel, the occupying Power, against the Palestinian people since September 2000. For all of these war crimes, acts of State terrorism and systematic human rights violations against our people, Israel, the occupying Power, must be held accountable and the perpetrators must be brought to justice.

I should be grateful if you would arrange to have the present letter distributed as a document of the tenth emergency special session of the General Assembly, under agenda item 5, and of the Security Council.

(Signed) Riyad Mansour

Minister

Permanent Observer