Warsen Aghabekian Shahin says that the international community must take concrete measures to put an end to Israeli impunity for abuses.
The international community must “assume its responsibility” and take measures against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs told Tel Aviv Tribune before an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council.
In an interview on Saturday, Warsen Aghabekian Shahin said that the council of 15 members should respect international law during his dealer at the UN headquarters in New York on Sunday to discuss the situation in the Gaza Strip.
The meeting was organized in response to the newly announced plan of Israel to seize the city of Gaza, which aroused large conviction of the world leaders.
“I expect the international community to represent international law and international humanitarian law,” Aghabkian Shahin told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“What has happened in Palestine for 22 months is nothing other than a genocide, and it is an integral part of the expansionist ideology of Israel which wants to resume the entire occupied state of Palestine.”
The Israeli security firm approved the plans this week to grasp the city of Gaza, forcibly shifting nearly a million Palestinians in concentration areas south of the bombed coastal enclave.
The Palestinians rejected the Israeli push to force them to get out of the city while the human rights groups and the UN warned that the plan would aggravate an already disastrous humanitarian crisis in Gaza and will cause new mass losses.
Israel is committed to advancing her plans despite growing criticism, saying that she wanted to “liberate Gaza from Hamas”.
The country’s best world ally, the United States, has not directly commented on the Gaza City seizure plan. But US President Donald Trump suggested earlier this week that he would not block an Israeli thrust to resume all Gaza.
Aghabekian Shahin told Tel Aviv Tribune that if Trump – whose administration continues to provide diplomatic and military support that is unshakable in Israel – wants to achieve a solution, Palestinian rights must be taken into account.
“There will be no peace in Israel-Palestine, or in the region elsewhere, or even in the world in general, if the rights of the Palestinians are not respected,” she said, noting that this means that a Palestinian state must be established.
The minister also criticized the recent remarks of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the future governance of Gaza.
Friday, in an article on social networks, Netanyahu said that he wanted “a peaceful civil administration” to be established in the enclave, “that which is not the Palestinian authority, not Hamas, and not another terrorist organization”.
But Aghabekian Shahin said it was up to the Palestinians to decide who should govern them.
“The one who has the legal and political authority over Gaza today is the PLO,” she said, referring to the Palestine Liberation Organization.
“If Gaza wants to go back to the heart, which is the entire Palestinian land, it must become under the control and governance of the Palestinian Authority, the OLP.”
Aghabekian Shahin also condemned the international community for omitting to act as Palestinians in the occupied West Bank has faced an increase in Israeli military attacks and settlers in the shadow of the country’s war against Gaza.
“It is the inaction that has embraced the Israelis, including the colonists, to do everything they do in the past six decades, since the first day of the 1967 occupation,” she said.
“Times are very dangerous now, and it is important that the international community assumes its responsibility. The impunity with which Israel was shifting with happiness should stop. ”