RAMALLAH, May 16, 2018 (WAFA) - Foreign Minister Riyad Malki said Wednesday that Palestine is looking into several options to counter United State and Israeli moves against Palestinians in the occupied territories.
He told Voice of Palestine radio that Palestine has several options after the United States blocked issuing a statement from the president of the United Nations Security Council condemning the massacre in the Gaza Strip including going to the UN General Assembly under the Uniting for Peace item, or going to the Human Rights Council to form an independent international commission of inquiry.
He said the Human Rights Council is going to hold an emergency meeting on Friday at the request of Palestine to demand the formation of a commission of inquiry into the ongoing Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.
Malki said, however, that the options for Palestine are ed in light of the lack of commitment by Arab countries to the resolutions of the former Arab summits, most notably the Amman Summit in 1980, which called for severing diplomatic ties with any country that moves its embassy to occupied Jerusalem, in addition to failure of the international community to implement Security Council resolutions on the Palestinian issue.
He said that the signing by President Mahmoud Abbas of papers for the accession to three international agencies out of the 22 agencies the United States has called on Palestine not to join them would strengthen the legal status of the State of Palestine as well as it will benefit from all the services provided by these agencies. It will also increase international isolation of the United States because it is going to leave these agencies when Palestine joins them.
Regarding the signing of the request for the referral for the International Criminal Court, Malki said that he is waiting for the General Prosecutor of the Court to determine a date for submitting the referral on settlements to open an official investigation into the crime of Israeli settlements.
M.K.
