Palestine’s envoy to the UN, Riyad Mansour, urged the UN Security Council on Tuesday to impose sanctions on Israel amid its ongoing lethal assaults on civilians throughout the Gaza Strip.
“Israel continues taking human lives and every action possible to spread wildfires across the Middle East as we sit here on the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions,” Mansour stated throughout an pressing Security Council session requested by Algeria after Israel carried out a lethal airstrike on a college sheltering displaced Palestinians.
“Let me state the obvious. Israel does not care about your condemnations…It dismisses your resolutions. It does not even listen to your debates,” Mansour stated, referring to Israeli envoy to the UN Gilad Erdan.
As Erdan was checking his cellphone when Mansour addressed the Council, the Palestinian envoy stated: “Their representative will be playing with his iPhone while you are talking.”
Saying that there’s nothing that may justify Israeli actions towards Palestinians, Mansour emphasised that what is occurring in Gaza isn’t “about the hostages. It became apparent long ago that this Israeli government could care less about them.”
“(Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu has other priorities, self-serving ones, maniacal ones,” he added.
Mansour urged the Security Council to “wake up” and continued: “Stop imagining that you can reason with the Israeli government so it stops killing civilians by thousands, imposing famine, torturing prisoners, colonizing and annexing our land, all while you appeal to them, call on them, demand them to stop.”
Calling on the Council members to not abandon their duties and use the instruments they need to implement actions, the Palestinian envoy requested: “When will the Israeli government be held accountable for its actions?”
He demanded that “it is time to sanction” these Israelis accountable for reported conflict crimes and stated: “When are you going to enforce your decisions and international law? You need to impose sanctions on those criminals.”
Mansour additionally introduced that Palestine “will go to the General Assembly to make sure that it upholds its charter responsibilities, to make sure that the determinations of the highest court in the world, the International Court of Justice, is translated into political will and momentum and to concrete actions to be pursued by the UN and its member states to end this illegal action as soon as possible.”
Source: www.anews.com.tr