The Palestinian people cannot wait any longer for justice and freedom: Call for immediate ceasefire- Letter from the State of Palestine – (A/ES-10/998-S/2024/451)

07 June 2024

Identical letters dated 7 June 2024 from the Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General, the President of the General Assembly and the President of the Security Council

         The atrocities that Israel is inflicting on the Palestinian people have reached indescribable and unquantifiable levels. From Gaza to Jerusalem and across every inch of Occupied Palestine, Israel continues its campaign of slaughter and terror against Palestinian civilians, ignoring every call for a ceasefire and breaching every law intended to protect civilians and preserve our collective humanity.

It has been eight months of unmitigated horrors as Israel has carried on with its genocidal onslaught on the Gaza Strip since October 2023, its occupying forces (Israeli occupying forces) and extremist settlers only intensifying their brutality, spilling more blood of innocents and destroying everything in their paths. And it has been 57 years of unmitigated torment and suffering for the Palestinian people under Israel’s foreign occupation. On 5 June 2024, that occupation inconceivably entered its fifty-eighth year.

While the Palestinian people, along with nearly the entire rest of the world, marked this solemn anniversary with calls for a ceasefire and calls to end to this illegal colonial occupation and abhorrent apartheid regime, Israel instead seized the opportunity again to provoke, incite, kill and destroy.

In occupied East Jerusalem, extremist settlers again paraded in a so-called “flag march” to celebrate Israel’s illegal annexation of the city, literally boasting of Israel’s disrespect for international law and the international community as a whole. They raged through the city chanting anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti‑Christian hate speech as they harassed, intimidated and attacked Palestinian civilians, including a journalist who was violently mauled by a mob of armed Israeli youth.

Moreover, more than 900 Israeli settlers raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound that day under the watch of Israeli occupying forces and performed Jewish religious in direct violation of the historic and legal status quo. This raid was clearly incited by Israeli officials, including members of the Prime Minister’s coalition, who continue threatening to ignite a religious war with catastrophic ramifications. In this regard, Israel’s so-called “national security minister”, the extremist, Israeli-indicted terrorist Ben-Gvir, declared: “We will march … and Jews will go up to the [Al-Aqsa Mosque]. All the generals in Gaza tell me that every house they enter they see pictures of [Al-Aqsa Mosque], so they should be hit in the place that is most important to them”.

Also, today, Israeli settlers, acting on their leader’s repeated calls to kill and expel Palestinians and seize Palestinian land, set fire to homes, cars and olive tree groves in three West Bank villages, terrorizing the residents of Beitin, Burqa and Deir Dibwan near Ramallah, all with the complicity of the Israeli occupying forces.

These are not random acts of violence and terror. This is official Israeli State policy, sponsored and led by Israeli officials. Yet there is still no accountability, further emboldening Israel’s government and its occupying forces, including settler militias. As stressed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, “pervasive impunity for such crimes has been commonplace for far too long in the occupied West Bank”, and the Palestinian civilian population there continues “being subjected to day-after-day of unprecedented bloodshed”.

At the same time, in the Gaza Strip, Israel carries on with increasing wantonness, massacring Palestinian civilians everywhere they go. Israel persists with its relentless attacks by air, land and sea every single day across Gaza, north, central and south, turning this tiny strip of land, that has been described alternately as the “world’s largest open air prison” or “concentration camp” into a graveyard for Palestinian children and their mothers and fathers and families.

Once again, Israel has targeted United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) schools sheltering displaced families, killing and wounding civilians and causing destruction to United Nations properties, in grave breach of international humanitarian law, the Charter of the United Nations and the Convention on the Immunities and Privileges of the United Nations. Some 186 UNRWA facilities have been targeted by attacks by Israeli occupying forces since October 2023 in deliberate violation of the inviolability of United Nations premises.

On 5 June, Israel attacked an UNRWA school in the Nuseirat refugee camp where 6,000 displaced Palestinians had been sheltering. At least 37 Palestinians were killed in that attack, including children, women and elderly persons, dozens of others were injured and massive damage was caused to the school. Israeli occupying forces declared that they had intentionally struck the school and followed that attack with another strike today on an UNRWA school in Al-Shati refugee camp, killing 3 Palestinians and injuring 15 others.

These attacks have further terrorized and traumatized Palestinian families who have been repeatedly displaced, forced to flee their homes and shelter after shelter in fear of the Israeli onslaught, with no safety or refuge to be found. As the UNRWA Director of Planning, Sam Rose , recently stated following the attack on the Nuseirat camp: “We’ve seen this time and time again, to the extent that it’s almost become normalized. In previous conflicts, single incidents like this would cause shock and outrage and would be remembered forever. Whereas it seems in this conflict it will be this one will be replaced by another in a few days’ time unless it all comes to an end. … We have normalized horror”.

The casualty toll in Gaza has now reached 36,731 Palestinians killed and 83,530 injured by Israel, while an estimated 10,000 children, women and men remain unaccounted for. They have been killed by Israeli bombs, missiles and bullets, an unending supply of weaponry still continuing to be transferred to the occupying Power by its allies, and by diseases and starvation and dehydration in an ever-growing famine as Israel, the occupying Power, persists with its chokehold on humanitarian assistance, depriving our people of food, water, medicines and fuel, subjecting them to the most dire, inhumane living conditions.

We demand an end to this inhumanity. The international community, including and foremost the Security Council, must act now with all the tools legitimately available to it to bring an end to all of these Israeli atrocities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. There must be accountability; international law, United Nations resolutions, the International Court of Justice provisional measures orders, all must be respected and implemented forthwith to bring a halt to Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Palestinian people.

We urge all States and peoples of conscience to act now to ensure a ceasefire, protect and preserve human life and salvage the prospects for peace. International law – and whatever may be left of human decency and morality – obligates international action now. The Palestinian people cannot wait any longer for justice and freedom.

The present letter is in follow-up to our 838 letters on the ongoing crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, which constitutes the territory of the State of Palestine. These letters, dated from 29 September 2000 (A/55/432-S/2000/921) to 31 May 2024 (A/ES-10/997-S/2024/424) constitute a basic record of the crimes being committed by Israel, the occupying Power, against the Palestinian people since September 2000. For all of these war crimes, acts of State terrorism and systematic human rights violations against our people, Israel, the occupying Power, must be held accountable and the perpetrators must be brought to justice.

I should be grateful if you would arrange to have the present letter distributed as a document of the tenth emergency special session of the General Assembly, under agenda item 5, and of the Security Council.

(Signed) Riyad Mansour

Minister

Permanent Observer