I am addressing the General Assembly today on behalf of the more than 14 million Palestinians whose parents and ancestors lived through the tragic Nakba 74 years ago and who are still experiencing its consequences, a source of shame for humankind and especially for all who conspired, planned and executed that heinous crime. More than 5 million Palestinians have been living under Israel’s military occupation for 54 years. I want to tell the Assembly today, on behalf of the Palestinians to whom I proudly belong, that unfortunately our trust in the possibility of achieving peace based on justice and international law is deteriorating because of Israel’s occupation policies. Does the international community want to smother whatever hope we have left?
It is clear that Israel, which is ignoring all the resolutions of international legitimacy, has decided not to be our partner in the peace process. It has undermined the Oslo Accords, which it signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Through its current policies, which are premeditated and deliberate, it has destroyed the possibility of a two-State solution, and that is unequivocal proof that Israel does not believe in
peace. It believes in imposing the status quo by brute force and aggression. We therefore do not have an Israeli partner with whom we can talk. Israel is ending its contractual relation with us and is making the relationship between the State of Palestine and Israel into no more than one between an occupying State and an occupied people. We will therefore deal with Israel as such henceforward, and we call on the international community to do the same. It was not we who made that choice but rather Israel on its own.
Israel is launching a frantic campaign to confiscate our lands, build colonial settlements and loot our resources, as if the land was unpopulated and had no owners, just as in 1948. It is giving free rein to the army and the terrorist settlers who are killing our Palestinian people in broad daylight, looting their land and taking their water, burning and demolishing their homes and forcing them to pay for the demolition or to destroy their homes with their own hands and uproot their own trees. All of that is done with official protection. Can anyone imagine such a thing? Israel is telling the Palestinian people, “Either you demolish your house or I will demolish it myself. But it is better if you demolish your house yourself with your own hands, because if I demolish it, you will have to pay for the demolition.” Can anyone conceive of that? I have to demolish my house or Israel will demolish it and make me pay for it.
The Israeli Government has authorized the establishment of racist Jewish terrorist organizations committing acts of terror against our people. It has provided them with protection while they subject Palestinians to aggression and call for them to be expelled from their homes. Foremost among those terrorist organizations are Hilltop Youth, Price Tag, Lehava, the Temple Guardians and many others. Those terrorist organizations are led by members of the Israeli Knesset, the Israeli authority. In that context, we call on the international community to put those organizations on the international terrorist lists. That is the only place they deserve to be.
In its frantic settlement expansion, Israel has not left us any land on which we can establish our independent State. Where can our people live in freedom and dignity? Where can we build our independent State to live in peace with our neighbours? We want to live in peace with them, with Israel. Where will we establish our independent State to live in peace with them, with Israel? Unfortunately there are now nearly 750,000 settlers, or 25 per cent of the total population, in the West Bank, the remaining Palestinian land after the partition resolution.
Israel is killing our people with impunity, as it did with the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Everyone here has heard about Shireen Abu Akleh. She was killed with a sniper’s bullets, which means that the sniper targeted her deliberately. Israel has admitted that a sniper killed her. In addition to being Palestinian, she also had American nationality. I dare the United States to prosecute or make accountable those who killed her, because they are Israelis.
Israel also commits acts of aggression against our sacred holy sites, both Christian and Islamic, especially in Jerusalem, our eternal capital and crown jewel. I would like to reiterate in that regard our acknowledgement of the Hashemite Custodianship of those holy sites. Israel attacks Muslim and Christian holy sites on a daily basis and without any reason. Israel attacked the funeral procession of Shireen Abu Akleh and her corpse inside the church, a holy place. That is what Israel is doing to the holy sites.
Israel is imposing falsified curriculums in our schools in the occupied Jerusalem. They are inventing curriculums. They take books and change what is in them under the same authors and then they impose the curriculums on our children to control what they learn. We will not allow that to happen. That is a violation of international law.
Israel is disrupting the Palestinian presidential and legislative elections by forbidding Palestinian citizens in Jerusalem to take part in those elections. Israel has done that three times before — in 1996, 2005 and 2006. The Israeli authorities ask us, “Why do you not organize elections?” We are ready. We issued the decrees to organize those elections, and we decided to hold them, but Israel prevented us from holding them. Therefore, we did not cancel the elections, we only postponed them. When Israel allows the elections to take place, or when some party tells Israel that it can allow us to hold elections, or when orders reach Israel to allow elections to take place, we will then organize them.
Israel is enacting racist laws and consecrating the apartheid regime. Yes, it is apartheid. Even if Israel does not like that appellation, it is apartheid. Israel is an apartheid regime. This is not only between Palestinians and Jews. Israel is taking actions against our people before the eyes of the international community with impunity. Why is Israel not being held accountable
for violating international law? Who is protecting Israel from being held accountable? I have no idea. Do Member States know who is protecting Israel from being held accountable? It is the United Nations, and foremost of which the most powerful in the United Nations. Why practise double standards when it comes to Israel?
Israel has repeatedly violated our land, and recently it closed the headquarters of six Palestinian human rights organizations. Israel tries to implement the law, but if we make a mistake, it holds us accountable and says, “You have made a mistake.” Israel determined, suddenly, that those organizations were terrorist organizations, and it raided their headquarters, looted their assets, confiscated their documents and burned them and did whatever it wanted. The whole world says that was wrong, except for Israel. Israel is saying that it was not wrong. If that is what Israel did to the offices of human rights organizations, imagine what it would have done if they were not human rights organizations.
Since its creation, Israel has committed brutal crimes against our people. It destroyed 529 Palestinian villages and expelled their residents during and after the war of 1948. It displaced 950,000 Palestinian refugees, in other words, half of the Palestinian population at the time. That is a figure that some try to manipulate. It is not, as Israel says, 250,000 refugees. No, the figure is indeed 950,000, according to the statistics of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, that is, the United Nations. And of course, now the number of displaced is in the millions.
Since 1948, Israel has committed more than 50 massacres, including in Tantoura and Kafr Qasim. Israel admitted that it had deliberately committed those massacres and targeted farmers returning from their farmland and killed them in cold blood. There have been 50 or 51 massacres, the most recent of which was against Gaza, which was targeted with missiles. I will not tell the Assembly how many elderly persons it killed, but The New York Times, a United States newspaper, said 67 children were killed in Gaza, as if they had been carrying rockets, using tanks and launching missiles. Sixty-seven children were killed by Israel. These are their photos. Who is going to assume responsibility for that? Why did Israel kill them?
I would like to provide the Assembly with the lists of the villages that were destroyed and the massacres that were perpetrated, and I would ask Israel, from this rostrum, to acknowledge its responsibility for destroying those villages, committing those massacres and displacing the Palestinian citizens and to apologize to the Palestinian people. After all that killing, Israel must apologize.
We call on Israel to bear the legal, political, moral and material responsibilities. It should be held accountable, and the international community must hold it accountable. We ask the international community right now to hold Israel accountable for the massacres it has committed.
Yes, we will go to the International Criminal Court, and to all the courts of the world, but first and foremost to the International Criminal Court to ask Israel to assume its legal, political, moral and material responsibilities.
Do the Israeli people want to remain colonizers forever? They have been colonizers for nearly 75 years. How much longer do they want to remain so? I ask the Assembly, should we wait for a century, or maybe for two centuries? Why are we the only people on this planet still living under occupation? I ask the General Assembly, the Security Council and advocates of human rights, why should we remain under occupation?
What are we still missing? What are the Israelis going to teach us? What are we missing that they need to occupy us, teach us, kill us, slaughter us or confiscate our land and loot our resources? They even take the rain that falls on us, and then they sell it back to us. They take our rain, and they sell it back to us.
We do not accept remaining the only party to respect the agreements we signed with Israel in 1993. Those agreements are no longer valid on the ground because of Israel’s persistence on violating them. Although we have asked Israel to end its occupation, its hostile measures and policies and unilateral actions, which were explicitly prohibited in the Oslo Accords and which President Biden mentioned to me personally — he said that unilateral actions should be ended — and while the Oslo Accords state that they should be ended, Israel has been the first to violate this prohibition, taking nothing but unilateral actions, while we have not taken any. We do not want to do that, and we do not want to violate agreements. Until when will we be the only ones committed to these agreements?
It is therefore our right — or, rather, our obligation — to look for other means to recover our rights and achieve a peace built on justice, including the implementation of the resolutions that were adopted
by our respective leaders, in particular our parliaments. Seven years ago, our parliament adopted decisions, and we told its members to wait awhile, since maybe things will change; we told them to be patient, since maybe the United States or Israel will change its stance. But no one listened to us.
We have made these decisions in order to preserve our national existence on our land and to uphold our historical rights as a nation under the umbrella of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The PLO brings together all Palestinian people, wherever they are in the world, be it inside Palestine, in the refugee camps or in the diaspora. All those who have Palestinian nationality or used to have the Palestinian nationality fall under the umbrella of the PLO.
The United Nations, with its different bodies, has adopted hundreds of resolutions on Palestine. None has been implemented. How is that possible? Not a single resolution has been implemented. I am talking about 754 General Assembly resolutions, 97 Security Council resolutions and 96 Human Rights Council resolutions — and not a single one has been implemented.
How come? Why is that? Whenever a resolution is adopted, everyone calls for its implementation in line with international legitimacy, but no one cares about any of the resolutions adopted for Palestine. Not a single resolution has been implemented.
We ask that one single resolution be implemented, so we can know that it has been implemented. We now want the implementation of a single resolution, resolution 181 (II), which was adopted by the General Assembly, and which unjustly and aggressively partitioned Palestine. Yes, we want that resolution to be implemented. We want the General Assembly to implement resolution 181 (II), and with it, another resolution, namely, resolution 194 (III). We want those two resolutions to be implemented because they are preconditions for Israel being accepted as a member of the United Nations. When those resolutions were adopted, Moshe Sharett, the Israeli Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time, pledged to implement them, and as a result, Israel was accepted as member of the United Nations. But until now neither resolution has been implemented. I want resolution 181 (II) to be implemented — one single resolution. It is our right to ask for its implementation.
I therefore ask that the General Assembly implement resolution 181 (II) and tell us that it has done so. We have submitted a request to the Secretary- General to implement that resolution. Is that possible or the Assembly will ignore us once again, as always?
The State of Palestine will also start the process of acceding to other international organizations. We were allowed to join the United Nations as an observer State. We are now an observer State at the United Nations. There are 15 million Palestinians, all of them educated, some of them highly educated, but we are only observer member.
That membership status allows us to accede to other international organizations, and starting tomorrow we will pursue our right and accede to them. It is our right to do so. We will join the World Health Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization and the International Civil Aviation Organization. We are going to accede to those organizations, which is our right to do, and no one should blame us.
The Security Council has adopted clear resolutions, whose implementation would achieve a just and comprehensive peace. The most recent of those was resolution 2334 (2016), which the United States itself submitted for adoption. The resolution was adopted, and two days after taking office Mr. Trump cancelled everything, including resolution 2334 (2016), and subsequently came up with his ultimate deal, which, together with all his other projects, we have totally rejected. Resolution 2334 (2016) was submitted by the United States and adopted under its sponsorship. But it went away because Mr. Trump rejected it.
I would like to remind the Assembly that we no longer need double standards. If the State of Palestine is prohibited from obtaining full membership at the United Nations and if the Palestinian people are not protected from aggression — but no one has done anything — and if practical steps are not taken to end occupation and achieve peace, then we will have to resort once again to petitioning the General Assembly, asking for legal measures and political steps to be taken to achieve those goals. Then we will have hope. We have the right to hope. We hope to be able to hope. We are living on hope. We are confident that the General Assembly will fully shoulder its responsibilities.
I am also confident that the Assembly will understand why we are going to take all those steps now. Throughout the years we have tried everything to
convince Israel to return to the negotiating table based on the resolutions of international legitimacy and the signed agreements, but Israel has refused and continues to refuse to do so.
With all due respect to what the international community has done — or has at least tried to do, because it has not done everything — in terms of support to our people and our just question politically and materially, it has unfortunately been unable to end the Israeli occupation and the heinous and continuous Israeli aggression against our people and provide them with protection. We want to be protected. We ask that we be protected. Protect us.
We will not resort to weapons. We will not resort to violence. That I can promise. We will not resort to terrorism. Working hand in hand with members of the General Assembly, we will fight terrorism, but we want to be protected from violence, terrorism and arms just like other peoples of the world.
The occupying State is acting as if it were a State above the law. Why is Israel acting as if it were a State above the law? Can anyone answer me? No one will answer me.
Surprisingly, States like the United States of America claim that they uphold international law and human rights, while at the same time — and I will speak frankly in this context — they provide unlimited support to Israel, and protect Israel from accountability. Those States assist Israel in pursuing its hostile policies, in contempt of the international community as a whole. Israel would not have been able to do what it is doing without the cover or the support of those States. Honestly put, even if members do not say that out of courtesy, I will say it.
Some of those States were partners at the very beginning, when they adopted decisions that led to the Nakba of the Palestinian people, in particular the ominous Balfour Declaration. Do members of the Assembly remember the Balfour Declaration? Of course they do not, because we are the only ones who are suffering its consequences. And then came the mandate and the sustained injustice against the Palestinian people when those States refused to compel Israel to end its occupation and aggression and respect the resolutions of international legitimacy. Those States therefore bear, along with Israel, the responsibility for the plight of the Palestinian people.
We therefore request Britain, the United States and Israel — and this is an official request — to acknowledge their responsibility for the major crime that was committed against our people and apologize for it. We ask for remedy and redress and for compensation to be granted to the Palestinian people — compensation that would be decided under international law. We will accept whatever is decided. We just want the injustice to be acknowledged.
Sadly enough, the United States and several European States that are enthusiastic about the two- State solution have recognized the State of Israel but have not so far recognized the State of Palestine. Our State exists and should be recognized in order to achieve peace. Those States have not so far recognized the State of Palestine, and they threaten to use the veto right if we try to ask for a full membership at the United Nations. If we ask — or when we ask — for full membership, they threaten us with the use of the veto right. To whom can we complain? We can only complain to God.
For 10 years now, the Observer State of Palestine at the United Nations has proved that Palestine qualifies for full membership. We have all recognized this. Palestine has been working seriously and responsibly with other States of the world in different committees and specialized organs. It has successfully and with great efficiency chaired the Group of 77 and China. We are an observer State, and yet we have chaired that Group and succeeded in our work, and the Assembly has recognized that. So why we are not allowed to be a full member? What are we lacking? Why is it that those States cannot recognize the State of Palestine and accept its full-fledged membership in the United Nations?
We therefore wish, beg and plead as we reiterate our request to attain full membership now. We also ask why double standards are imposed upon us? We are the exception. We are the only ones in the world on whom double standards are being imposed.
On the other hand, we call upon the Secretary- General of the United Nations to work tirelessly to come up with an international plan to end the occupation of the land of the State of Palestine, to achieve peace, security and stability in the region, in line with the resolutions of the international legitimacy and the Arab Peace Initiative. The Arab Peace Initiative has been violated by some, but it still exists, and resolution 1515 (2003) still needs to be implemented.
When we hear something positive, we acknowledge it. Yesterday and the day before, I listened to President of the United States Joe Biden and the Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid (see A/77/PV. 6 and A/77/PV.8, respectively), and to other world leaders. I heard them supporting the two-State solution, and I was pleased to hear that. Undoubtedly, this is a positive development.
The real test for the seriousness and credibility of this stance — because we have had enough of resolutions and words — is for the Israeli Government to return to the negotiating table immediately, tomorrow, to implement the two-State solution in line with the relevant resolutions of international legitimacy and the Arab Peace Initiative, and to end all the unilateral measures that undermine the two-State solution.
Israel cannot negotiate while building settlements, killing and injuring people, and demolishing houses. On the contrary, those acts must cease even temporarily to let us negotiate. If the negotiations fail, then Israel can do whatever it wants. But if it wants to negotiate, it has to stop these unilateral measures.
In reality, the State of Palestine is looking forward to peace. Let us make peace so that we can live in security, stability and prosperity for the benefit of future generations of all the peoples of the region.
We want peace. We are fighting terrorism wherever it is found. The Assembly knows that we have signed agreements to fight global terrorism with 85 States around the world, at the forefront of which is the United States. No one can deny it. What more is required from us? We are ready for that.
I want to tell my people and the whole world that I am proud to have spent many decades of my life struggling with my brethren, the leaders of the Palestinian people, some who have passed away and some who are still alive, to preserve the rights of our heroes and courageous people, which have been the best example of sacrifice. Despite all the conspiracies and pressures that were placed on our people, we have maintained our independent national decision, which is a decision with which no one can interfere. The decisions we take are our own, and no one can interfere in them.
We are also attached to our national constants, which are well known, and we reiterate our rejection of any order or directive from whomever in the world. We are not ready to accept directives from any State, whether large or small. We make our own decisions.
I would like to pay tribute to the Palestinian martyrs who have lit the way to freedom and independence with their blood. They will remain symbols to be remembered by generations of Palestinians one after the other with gratitude and reverence, and we will live up to the responsibility they left us.
As for our brave prisoners, they are the living conscience of our people. They are sacrificing their freedom for the freedom of their people. Words cannot describe them. They are living martyrs. Some have received four or five life sentences, keeping them endlessly in prisons. They are heroes and deep-rooted leaders. We will always work for their freedom. We will not fail them until they are freed. We will not fail their sons and their daughters. We will not fail their families and their relatives.
Some of our prisoners are children — of 10 years of age, 8 years of age, 7 years of age, 6 years of age — yet they are prisoners. We have one child who was arrested by 30 soldiers. Is it acceptable? Tens of thousands of our children are in prison. Who can accept that? Which international law — which good conscience — can accept that a seven-year-old child is prosecuted and imprisoned? Legally and practically speaking, children are not responsible for all their acts.
I would like to talk about the hero and prisoner Nasser Abu Hamid whose transformation since he was sentenced is shocking. Look at how he was before and how he is now. Now, he is just waiting for his death to come at any time. His mother is asking to see him for just one minute. Why are they not allowing his mother to see him for a single minute? She is the mother of martyrs and prisoners. The mother of Nasser Abu Hamid has numerous children, and among them are martyrs and prisoners. She wants to see her son, but she is forbidden to see him. No religion, no law can find this acceptable.
From this rostrum, I would like to pay tribute to the mother of Nasser, a mother of prisoners and martyrs. Unfortunately, the occupying Power has not allowed her to see her son, the prisoner and hero, for a single minute while he is fighting death because of medical negligence. He is a prisoner with cancer. He committed a crime but, from a humanitarian point of view, he should be receive treatment but he is not allowed to. He is not allowed to see his mother, and no one will be allowed to see him, even after he passes away. We have hundreds of graves with numbers. They put deceased martyrs in a digital prison to punish his mother — and
us. Since 1967, martyrs are held in digital prisons and mortuaries. Is this acceptable? Who can accept that?
In conclusion, I would like to say to the General Assembly, which represents the international community and embodies international legitimacy, that the occupation will definitely end, sooner or later. Let the Assembly now bear the responsibility for implementing its resolutions. Let us achieve a just and comprehensive peace instead of achieving a peace with further sacrifices.
We have been waiting for too long. We are very tired. We have had to live through long bitter days. Does the General Assembly have a solution? I want a solution.