NEW YORK, June 9, 2018 (WAFA) - The United Nations General Assembly is expected to hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday at the request of the Arab members to vote on a resolution similar to a one previously vetoed by the United States at the Security Council deploring Israel’s killing of Palestinians in Gaza and calling for protection for the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation.

The French news agency, AFP, quoted Miroslav Lajcak, president of the General Assembly, as confirming on Saturday the emergency meeting.

Palestine’s UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour said on Friday that the General Assembly is going to vote on the same Kuwaiti-sponsored resolution that was vetoed by the US in the Security Council on June 1. The US, or any other country, does not have veto power at the 193-member General Assembly, whose resolutions are usually not binding but have mainly moral impact.

Talking about Israel’s latest killing of four Palestinian protesters at Gaza’s eastern borders on Friday and wounding over 600 others, some of them critical, raising as a result the number of Palestinians killed and wounded by Israel in Gaza since March 30 to 127 dead and over 14,000 wounded, Mansour stressed that “what happened today (in Gaza) adds to our argument and to the urgency of providing international protection” for the Palestinian civilians.

The resolution asks UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to make proposals within 60 days “on ways and means for ensuring the safety, protection and well-being of the Palestinian civilian population under Israeli occupation,” said Mansour.

M.K.