Gaza, October 15: The UN Human Rights Council is to discuss a draft resolution condemning Israeli human rights violations in Gaza, East Jerusalem Al-Quds and the rest of the West Bank.
The two-page document was submitted to the council by Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan and Tunisia in advance of a two-day special session that opens Thursday on Israeli actions in East Jerusalem Al-Quds and the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Thursday session will mainly focus on the Goldstone Gaza report, which denounced Israel’s January military offensive in Gaza.
The Palestinian envoy to the UN in Geneva, Ibrahim Khraishi, expressed confidence on Wednesday that the resolution would gain enough votes in the Human Rights Council to move on to New York, where it would carry more weight.
“[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has said that he won’t allow a special session [of the Human Rights Council] and that he will not allow the resolution to pass,” said Khraishi. “The world is not going according to Netanyahu.”
Facing mounting Arab criticism for giving in to Western pressures to dilute the Gaza report and even delay a UN vote on the issue, the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday submitted a new resolution denouncing Israeli violations of human rights, with two pages devoted to the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem Al-Quds.
The resolution lashes at the Israeli land grabbing in the occupied territories as well as the construction and expansion of settlements, the continuous construction of the separation wall.
It further charged Israel with changing the demographic and geographic character of East Jerusalem Al-Quds, restricting the freedom of movement for its Palestinian citizens, as well as the continuous digging and excavation works in and around Al-Aqsa Mosque and its vicinity.
Regarding the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip, the resolution asked the 47-member Council to recognize that the closure of border crossings and the cutting of the supply of fuel, food and medicine amount to ‘collective punishment of Palestinian civilians and lead to disastrous humanitarian and environmental consequences’.
Finally, the resolution called on the council to endorse the Goldstone Report and its recommendations, which would pave the way for Israelis to be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
Tel Aviv has been lobbying world leaders to prevent advancement of the report, threatening to stop Middle East peace negotiations.
Khraishi, however, argued ‘it is Israeli violations against Palestinians that is stopping the peace process from moving forward’, scoffing at the Israeli demand to be recognized as a ‘Jewish state’, while Palestinians are being killed.
—–Agencies