committed now, and that will be committed in the ground invasion of Gaza.”
Canada’s U.N. Ambassador Robert Rae countered that the resolution appears to forget that the events of Oct. 7 happened. The amendment would condemn Hamas, “which is responsible for one of the worst terrorist attacks in history,” he said.
Pakistan’s U.N. Ambassador Munir Akran drew loud applause when he said the Arab-drafted resolution deliberately didn’t condemn or mention Israel or name any other party. “If Canada was really equitable,” Akram said, “it would agree either to name everybody — both sides who are guilty of having committed crimes — or it would not name either as we chose.”
The vote on the Canadian amendment was 88-55 with 23 abstentions, but it failed to get a two-thirds majority of all those voting. In the vote on the entire resolution that followed Canada abstained.
The assembly’s emergency special session, which began Wednesday, continued Friday morning with U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield echoing Israel’s Erdan in calling the resolution “outrageous” for never mentioning Hamas and saying it is “detrimental” to the vision of a two-state solution.
She called it “a perilous moment for Israelis and Palestinians,” stressing that there is no justification for Hamas “terror,” that Palestinians are being used as human shields and that “the lives of innocent Palestinians must be protected.”
Oman, speaking on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council, condemned Israel’s “siege” of Gaza, starvation of its population and collective punishment of Palestinians. But it said the Palestinians won’t be deterred from demanding their “legitimate inalienable rights, chief among them the right to self- determination and the right to establish an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
In addition to calling for “an immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities,” the resolution adopted Friday demands that all parties immediately comply with their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law requiring protection of civilians and the schools, hospitals and other infrastructure critical for their survival.
The resolution demands that essential supplies be allowed into the Gaza Strip and humanitarian workers have sustained access. And it calls on Israel to rescind its order for Gazans to evacuate the north and move to the south and “firmly rejects any attempts at the forced transfer of the Palestinian civilian population.”
The resolution also stresses the need “to urgently establish a mechanism to ensure the protection of the Palestinian civilian population.”
And it “emphasizes the importance of preventing further destabilization and escalation of violence in the region” and calls on all parties to exercise “maximum restraint” and on all those with influence to press them “to work toward this objective.”
Source: Associated Press
