UNITED NATIONS: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has urged the United Nations to suspend Israel’s membership unless it ends its aggression against Palestinians and implements the United Nations resolutions envisaging two separate states — Palestinian and Israeli— and the return of Palestinian refugees.
According to AL Jazeera, Abbas spoke during the first official UN commemoration of the fleeing of thousands of Palestinians from what is now Israeli amid the violence of the partition of Palestine 75 years ago.
More than 760,000 Palestinians fled and were expelled from their houses in 1948 when Israel was created, an event Palestinians call Nakba— and catastrophe — and marked each year on May 15.
In an hour-long emotion-filled speech, President Abbas asked the global nations why more than 1,000 resolutions adopted by the United Nations bodies regarding the Palestinians were never implemented.
He held up the letter from Moshe Sharett, Israel’s foreign minister, after resolutions were adopted in 1947 and 1948 promising to implement them and said: “Either they do respect these obligations, and they stop becoming a member.”
President Abbas said, “Officially, we demand today, following international resolutions and international law, to ensure that Israel respects these resolutions or suspend Israel’s membership of the United Nations.”
President Abbas accused Israel of having “never fulfilled its obligations and the prerequisites for its membership” of the United Nations.
The President of Palestine counted “around 1,000 resolutions” adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, Security Council, and Human Rights Council related to Israel. He said, “To date, not a single resolution was implemented.”
President Abbas said that Nakba “didn’t start in 1948 and it didn’t stop after that date.”
According to the United Nations, “Israel, the occupying power, continues its aggression against the Palestinian citizens and continues to deny this Nakba and rejects world resolutions regarding the return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland,” he said. 5.9 million Palestinian citizens are living in the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.
