Palestine's UN envoy Riyad Mansour on Tuesday, demanded Israel halt its occupation policies and urged the international community to uphold Palestinian rights.
"The Israeli government is actively provoking escalation in the West Bank, mass extrajudicial killings with over 1,000 Palestinians killed, mass displacement, nearly 40,000 Palestinians displaced in two years," Mansour told the Security Council, stressing that "Israel must end, not entrench its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory."
Warning that Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem is worsening, he said, "Israel's response to the ICJ (International Court of Justice) has been to double down on its breaches of the UN Charter and international law. It has violated the inviolability of UN premises by unlawfully seizing the UNRWA's (PUN Palestine refugee agency) compound in occupied East Jerusalem, removing the UN flag and raising the Israeli flag over it. The compound is now occupied, as is the city."
He highlighted the human cost of the conflict, saying that "since the 10th of October alone, nearly 400 Palestinians have been killed, including many children, and 1,000 more have been injured."
"People are enduring a painful, harsh winter without adequate shelter, spending days and nights in flooded tents in humane conditions for 2 million people, including 1 million children, who have already suffered far too much," he added.
Demand Israel end its "inhumane" practices, Mansour said, "Israel has described this practice as barbaric when it concerns Israelis, yet it has cruelly withheld Palestinian bodies for decades. This inhumane practice must end; families must be able to offer their loved ones a dignified burial."
Mansour condemned illegal Israeli settlement expansion and the displacement of Palestinians, stressing that "the unprecedented escalation of settler violence terrorizing Palestinian communities must be understood in the context of Israel's continual policy of displacement and replacement of our people."
"The objective is clear and unchanging: annexation," he said. "We call on all countries to comply with those obligations rather than be complicit in colonial policies that violate Palestinian self-determination and undermine all prospects for peace."
