NEW YORK, Friday, May 10, 2024 (WAFA) - Addressing the UN General Assembly emergency session held to reconsider Palestine’s full UN membership application that would grant new rights and privileges to Palestine, Permanent Observer of the observer State of Palestine, Riyad Mansour, stated: “A yes vote is a vote for Palestinian existence, it is not against any State but it is against our attempts to deprive us of our State."

He added that voting in favor of the Palestinian bid to become a full U.N. member would be an investment in peace and an empowerment of the forces of peace.

Permanent Observer of the observer State of Palestine said that after holding observer status for fifty years, “we wish from all those who invoke the UN Charter to abide by the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination guaranteed by the Charter.”

He said people have to make a decision: stand by the right of a nation to live in freedom and dignity on its ancestral land, standing with peace and recognizing the rights of Palestinians -or they can stand on the sidelines of history.

He also recounted the devastating impacts of the ongoing war in Gaza, with over 35,000 Palestinians killed, a further 80,000 injured and over two million displaced.

“No words can capture what such loss and trauma signify for Palestinians, their families, their communities and for our nation as a whole,” he said.

He added that Palestinians in Gaza have been pushed to the “very edge” of the Strip, “to the very brink of life” with “bombs and bullets haunting them”.

Mansour highlighted that despite the attacks and destruction, the flag of Palestine “flies high and proud” in Palestine and across the globe becoming a “symbol raised by all those who believe in freedom and its just rule”.

“It is true that we will not disappear but the lives lost cannot be restored,” he stated.

T.R.