NEWYORK, Friday, April 19, 2024 (WAFA) - “Our right to self-determination is inalienable. It is not tied to a timeframe”, Riyad Mansour, Palestine’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations, Thursday said before the UN Security Council (UNSC).
Speaking before the 15-nation Council, which convened to vote on a draft resolution that recommended that Palestine become a full member of the UN, Mansour stated: “Our right to self-determination is inalienable. It is not tied to a time or a timeframe. Our right is eternal, preeminence and continuous.”
“It cannot be delayed. It cannot be suspended and it has no statute of limitations. It is important that this right not be subject to manipulation, or domination or conditions, especially not by Israel, the occupying power, the ethnic cleansing power, the genocidal power, the colonial power that is determined to evict our people from their homeland, to eliminate their identity and to replace their history and their culture and to uproot their present and their civilization and to besiege their future and their horizons,” he added.
He asked the Council members: “Will you give Israel the time it needs to annex Palestinian land? Will you give it the immunity to evict the people and kill them? Will you give Israel the weapons to kill more people? Will you give her, give Israel the right to veto our right to exist on our land? To veto the Palestinian state right to full membership in the United Nations?”
“Please remember that once this session adjourns, in Palestine, there are innocents paying the price with their lives and the lives of their children, the price of this Israeli action, a price to the double standards, the blind bias towards Israel. The price for the delay in justice, freedom and peace,” he said.
The Palestinian Ambassador broke into tears and said, “Our Palestinian people, wherever they are, want life, they cling onto life. Just like the other peoples on this planet, the Palestinians are people who aspire to freedom, to a dignified life, to a peaceful existence.”
“The people of Palestine will not disappear. The people of Palestine will not be buried. The Palestinian people have never been unnecessary,” he said, adding that “you either do us justice or you do it justice.”
He repeated: “We love life, to live in freedom and dignity in our national homeland. We will not disappear. Either you deal with us with fairness and give us our rights or give us rights.”
The US vetoed a resolution in the UN Security Council on a Palestinian bid to be granted full membership of the United Nations.
The 15-nation Council voted on a draft resolution Thursday that would have recommended to the 193-member UN General Assembly “that the State of Palestine be admitted to membership in the United Nations.”
The resolution got 12 votes in its favour, with Switzerland and the UK abstaining and the US casting its veto.
To be adopted, the draft resolution required at least nine Council members voting in its favour, with no vetoes by any of its five permanent members – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
K.F.
