Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas insists that Israel should respect UN resolutions on Palestine or stop as a UN member.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has urged the United Nations to droop Israel’s membership on this planet physique until it ends its aggression in opposition to Palestinians and implements UN resolutions establishing separate Israeli and Palestinian states in addition to the return of Palestinian refugees.
Abbas spoke on Monday in the course of the first official UN commemoration of the flight of a whole lot of hundreds of Palestinians from what’s now Israel amid the violence of the partition of Palestine 75 years in the past.
Greater than 760,000 Palestinians fled or had been expelled from their properties in 1948 when Israel was created, an occasion Palestinians name Nakba — or disaster — and marked every year on Could 15.
In an hourlong emotion-filled speech, Abbas requested the world’s nations why greater than 1,000 resolutions adopted by UN our bodies relating to the Palestinians had by no means been applied.
He held up a letter from Israel’s overseas minister, Moshe Sharett, after resolutions had been adopted in 1947 and 1948 promising to implement them and stated: “Both they do respect these obligations, or they cease turning into a member.”
“We demand at present formally, in accordance with worldwide legislation and worldwide resolutions, to be sure that Israel respects these resolutions or droop Israel’s membership of the UN,” Abbas stated in his speech.
Abbas accused Israel of getting “by no means fulfilled its obligations and the stipulations for its membership” of the United Nations.
The Palestinian president counted “round 1,000 resolutions” adopted by the UN Common Meeting, Safety Council and Human Rights Council associated to Israel. “Thus far, not one single decision was applied,” he stated.
Abbas added that Nakba “didn’t begin in 1948 and it didn’t cease after that date”.
“Israel, the occupying energy, continues its occupation and its aggression in opposition to the Palestinian individuals and continues to disclaim this Nakba and rejects worldwide resolutions relating to the return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland,” he stated. There are 5.9 million Palestinian refugees residing within the occupied West Financial institution, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, based on the UN.
The UN is commemorating Nakba at its headquarters in New York Metropolis this 12 months for the primary time after a decision was handed in November.
Israel’s UN consultant, Gilad Erdan, branded the occasion “despicable” and wrote a letter to different ambassadors urging them to not attend.
In response to the Israeli overseas ministry, 32 international locations, together with america, Canada, Ukraine and 10 from the European Union, didn’t attend.
The UN’s undersecretary-general for political affairs and peacebuilding, Rosemary DiCarlo, reaffirmed the UN’s “clear place” that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories should finish as a result of it’s “unlawful below worldwide legislation”.
Abbas additionally stated that a very powerful proper Palestinians are demanding now’s self-determination based mostly on June 1967 borders.
Abbas added that Palestinians usually are not in opposition to Jews, however “I’m in opposition to those that occupy our land”.
He stated Israel ought to recognise and apologise for the Nakba and pay compensation to the refugees and for the land it now occupies. And he stated that if these root causes usually are not addressed, the Palestinians will proceed to pursue authorized motion, particularly on the Worldwide Felony Court docket, which was greeted by loud applause from the massive viewers in a UN convention room.
Israel has remained defiant.
“We are going to combat the ‘Nakba’ lie with full power and we received’t enable the Palestinians to proceed to unfold lies and warp historical past,” Israel’s International Minister Eli Cohen stated in a press release.