Parliamentarians from around the world joined diplomats and United Nations officials at Headquarters today to discuss ways of advancing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process towards a two-State solution, a goal Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said could still be achieved if the parties, supported by the international community, demonstrated collective political will needed to implement the existing constructive proposals.
The Palestinian Rights Committee today approved four draft resolutions relating to the question of Palestine, as it considered the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as well as all violence against civilians, be they Palestinian or Israeli.
The youth of the United States were driving a change across the country that could, in the long term, alter its foreign policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said Noam Chomsky, international public intellectual and Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, today during a lecture to the United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.
As the world celebrated the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, the situation on the ground was deteriorating, with the summer’s conflict in Gaza having caused the worst impact on civilians of all that had preceded it, and Israel continuing to expand settlements, the Palestinian Rights Committee stressed.
The two-State solution was “disappearing before our very eyes”, while the world was falling short of protecting Palestinians and holding Israel accountable for its actions, the Palestinian Rights Committee heard today in a briefing.
A decade after the International Court of Justice deemed illegal the situation arising from Israel’s construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, the Palestinian Rights Committee, in a special meeting, reaffirmed the Court’s findings and called on Israel to immediately dismantle its system of walls and fences and to compensate Palestinians that had sustained damages as a result.
This morning’s swearing in of a new Palestinian unity Government officially ended seven years of division between the State of Palestine’s two main political factions and strengthened its ability to address the challenges posed by Israel’s occupation, the top Palestinian diplomat at the United Nations said today.
A two-State solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict would remain elusive until Jerusalem’s future was resolved, two journalists said in a briefing to the Palestinian Rights Committee heard today.
Palestinians would change their approach to ending the occupation of their land if Israel’s inflammatory and illegal policies — such as its recent attempt to impose its sovereignty over Al-Aqsa Mosque, a major Islamic holy site in East Jerusalem — continued unabated, the Permanent Observer for the State of Palestine said today.
During today’s official launch of the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, the President of the State of Palestine called on the international community to support the observance and expressed hope it would lead to the end of Israel’s 47-year occupation of Palestinian lands and to the creation of an independent Palestinian State with full United Nations membership.
