United Nations (TDI): Pakistan has called on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to take steps to end Israel’s aggression in the occupied West Bank, stressing that the 15-member body ensure that the ceasefire in Gaza extends beyond the war-hit enclave to all occupied Palestinian territories.
“Peace is impossible as long as Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank continue with impunity,” Pakistan’s alternative permanent representative to the UN Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad said on Tuesday after a briefing to the UNSC members by the top UN official for the Middle East Peace Process, Sigrid Kaag, on the situation in the restive region.
He said that more than 50,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced, with military raids, settler violence, and illegal land annexations intensifying daily.
He added that these are not isolated incidents but part of a deliberate strategy to erase Palestinian identity from their own land. It is ethnic cleansing in real time.
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Reaffirming Pakistan’s unwavering support to the Palestinian people in their struggle for self-determination, the Pakistani envoy said that a sovereign, independent and contiguous State of Palestine based on pre-1967 borders, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital, was not just a political necessity but it is a moral imperative also.
He stated, “If we truly believe in the United Nations Charter principles, if support justice, rule of law, fundamental right of all peoples to live in dignity, then we must act.”
He urged the global community to “prioritize” the pursuit of a just and enduring peace in the Middle East in general and the Occupied Palestinian Territories in particular in a bid to move beyond this perpetual cycle of violence and destruction, emphasizing that despite the ceasefire, the situation remains precarious and the pause in violence should not be mistaken for peace.
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Iftikhar demanded complete and immediate implementation of the ceasefire deal that ensures a permanent cessation of hostilities, Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, unrestricted humanitarian access, and a comprehensive reconstruction plan for the enclave to be supported by the global community and led and owned by the Palestinians.
