RAMALLAH: President Mahmoud Abbas Wednesday welcomed the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) of a draft resolution formally demanding an end to Israel’s illegal presence in the occupied Palestinian territories.
President Abbas considered the voting of two thirds of the UNGA Member States in favor of the draft resolution, which formally demands an end to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories within 12 months, an indicative of the international consensus on the justice of the Palestinian question and triumph for the Palestinian people’s inalienable rights to self-determination and the establishment of their independent state.
He stressed the importance of the resolution, particularly that it is based on the ICJ’s advisory opinion, which found that Israel’s decades-long occupation of the Palestinian territories was “unlawful”, and that its “near-complete separation” of people in the occupied West Bank breached international laws concerning “racial segregation” and “apartheid”
, and grounded in international law.
He commended the states that has voted in favor of the draft resolution for standing by the Palestinian people to achieve their rights and urged them to take individual and collective measures to oblige Israel to implement the resolution, which demands that Israel ‘comply without delay with all its legal obligations under international law, including as stipulated by the International Court of Justice, by, inter alia: (a) Withdrawing all its military forces from the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including its airspace and maritime; (b) Putting an end to its unlawful policies and practices, including ceasing immediately all new settlement activity, evacuating all settlers from the Occupied Palestinian Territory and dismantling the parts of the wall constructed by Israel that are situated in the Territory, and repealing all legislation and measures creating or maintaining the unlawful situation, including those which discriminate against the Palestinian people, as well as
all measures aimed at modifying the demographic composition, character and status of any parts of the Territory, including all measures violating the historic status quo at the holy sites of Jerusalem.’
The resolution demands that Israel does so also by, inter alia, ‘ (d) Allowing all Palestinians displaced during the occupation to return to their original place of residence; and (g) Not impeding the Palestinian people from exercising its right to self-determination, including its right to an independent and sovereign State, over the entirety of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.’
He pointed out that the resolution came at a historic moment in time and that international consensus on it renews the hope of the Palestinian people, who are subjected to an all-out genocidal war in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including Jerusalem, for the realization of their aspirations to freedom, independence and the establishment of their independent state, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Source: Palestine News a
nd Information Agency – WAFA