Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas harshly criticized the international community for closing eyes on Israel’s brutality in the occupied Palestine, as did other world leaders in UNGA meeting.
It was on this Friday that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas delivered his speech at the UN General Assembly meeting. He described the colonization of Palestinian land by Israel as a “stain on all humanity,” and rebuked the international community for making an “exception” out of Palestine by letting Israel oppress Palestinians with total impunity.
“I am telling you on behalf of the Palestinian people that our trust in achieving a peace based on justice is regressing. Do you want to smother the hope we have?” asked Abbas during his United Nations General Assembly speech. “Israel has decided not to be our partner in the peace process, and has undermined any attempt to find peace by deploying policies that destroy the two-state solution because it does not believe in peace but in the forceful imposition of a status quo,” he also noted.
Abbas then described the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians as that of an “occupying state and occupied people” and that various Israeli abuses against the Palestinians is the result of the lack of will from the international community to hold Israel accountable for what it does to Palestinians.
“How long should we wait for our lands? Should we wait one century, two centuries? Why is Israel held unaccountable for its violations of international law? Who is doing this? You, the UN, allow this, and on top of this, the most powerful in the UN. Why these double standards? Why do they not treat us equally?” Abbas also addressed the world leaders present in the meeting.
Other world leaders also stood for Palestine
Many other world leaders also addressed the Palestine issue during their UNGA speech.
The emir of Qatar, for example, said during his speech this Friday that the UN Security Council must compel Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territories.
In his speech before the General Assembly, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani noted that “the Security Council must shoulder its responsibility and must compel Israel to end the occupation of Palestinian territories and to establish a Palestinian state along the borders of 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
Likewise, Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi addressed the issue of Palestine during his Wednesday speech at the General Assembly meeting and asserted that “Human rights belong to all, but unfortunately, it is trampled upon by many governments,” he added, referring to the discovery of unmarked graves of Indigenous people in Canada, the suffering of the Palestinians, and images of migrant children held in cages in the United States.”
Chile’s President Gabriel Boric also spoke in support of Palestine in his speech and warned that the violation and cruelty of the Israeli occupations against Palestinian people has reached to alarming levels.
In his first speech at the UN, the world’s youngest leader urged the world “not to normalize the permanent violations of human rights against the Palestinian people and the law; international resolutions enacted by this Assembly must be adhered to year after year”. Boric also called on the member States to support the establishment of an independent Palestinian State”.
Likewise, Jordan’s King Abdullah warned that “alarm bells” were sounding around the globe, as he touched on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as other issues such as climate change and the refugee crisis. “The international community should send a strong message of support for the rights of Palestinian refugees, ensuring that Palestinian refugee children have schools to go to and access to appropriate medical care,” Jordan’s king said.
