Agencies-Gaza post
The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) accepted two pro-Palestine resolutions at its 49th session in Geneva, on Friday evening.
The Council reaffirmed the Palestinian people’s right to live in freedom, justice, and dignity, as well as their right to an independent State of Palestine, in its first resolution on their right to self-determination.
The Council reaffirmed in its second resolution on Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including occupied Jerusalem, that “Israeli settlements established since 1967 in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan were illegal under international law, and constituted a major impediment to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting, and comprehensive peace.”
The UN Human Rights Council’s unanimous voting in favor of two resolutions on the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and the illegality of Israeli settlements was lauded by Riyad al-Maliki, the Palestinian minister of foreign affairs and expatriates.
Five countries abstained from voting on the draft resolution “Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the Occupied Syrian Golan,” comprising Ukraine, Lithuania, Brazil, Cameroon, and Honduras.
Meanwhile, four countries voted against the resolution: the United States, the United Kingdom, the Marshall Islands, and Malawi.
Al-Maliki praised the passage of the two resolutions and congratulated the member nations that voted in favor of them by an overwhelming majority, calling on those who did not support them to “be ashamed of themselves” and to “end the policy of double standards.”
He noted that the passage of the resolution on the illegality of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territory reaffirms the necessity for a boycott of these settlements, which would result in their rapid dismantlement.
Al-Maliki emphasized the importance of the international community banning settlement-manufactured goods and ending commercial and military ties with Israel because of its violations of international law.
