Foreign Minister Riyad Malki welcomed today the position of the 47 United Nations experts denouncing Israeli plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank while calling on the international community to prevent this plan from taking place.
He welcomed specifically what came in the statement of the independent Special Procedures mandates appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council in which they warned that the annexation, in addition to being a violation of the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, is also a cause for war and suffering.
“The annexation of occupied territory is a serious violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions, and contrary to the fundamental rule affirmed many times by the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly that the acquisition of territory by war or force is inadmissible,” said the 47 UN experts in their statement. “The international community has prohibited annexation precisely because it incites wars, economic devastation, political instability, systematic human rights abuses and widespread human suffering.”
Malki thanked the UN experts for their clarification of the bad role played by the United States by encouraging the occupation authority to commit crimes, including illegal plans to annex more lands, and granting the occupation and its officials immunity and impunity.
He called on the international community to shoulder its responsibilities and to heed the call by the experts that they have a duty to stop Israel’s annexation plan, calling on states to prevent the entry of settlement goods or the entry of settlers into their countries, in addition to imposing sanctions on Israel, including on weapons and equipment used against the Palestinian people.
