Pakistan Mission to United Nations

Written statement submitted by Pakistan for the United Nations Security Council Open Debate on "The Situation in the Middle East, including the Palestine Question" (19 October 2021)

Mr. President,

Pakistan welcomes the convening of the open debate of the UN Security Council on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian Question.

The Secretary-General's Report covering the last six months, reveals that violence between Israel and the Palestinians has continued and often escalated. Twenty-seven Palestinians were killed, including 2 women and 5 children, 4814 injured, including 10 women and 530 children. The demolitions and seizure of Palestinian properties have also continued in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

These actions are a disturbing codicil to the Israeli aggression against the Holy Al Aqsa Mosque last May, which inflamed tensions and triggered the most serious outbreak of hostilities between Palestinians and Israel in several years. The security environment created by Israel's persistent aggressions is extremely volatile. It could lead, at any time, to another escalation of hostilities.

Many States and entities appear to have lost hope for a just and peaceful settlement of this conflict. Yet, it is vital not to lose sight of the legal, political and moral dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

• First, I believe there is no question in anyone's mind that Israel's actions in the occupied Palestinian lands are all grave violations of Security Council resolutions and international law, including humanitarian law. The seizure of land and properties for Israeli settlements; the violence against unarmed Palestinian children, women and men; the blockade of Gaza; the desecration of Holy Al-Aqsa.
• Second, there is no moral, legal or political equivalence between Israel, the occupying State, and the occupied and oppressed Palestinian people. The Palestinian struggle for self-determination and implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions is legitimate; the Israeli repression of the occupied Palestinian people is illegitimate. Nor can any equivalence be drawn between Israel's military and occupation forces – one of the most powerful in the world – and Palestinians armed with little more than stones and defiant courage;
• Third, the perpetuation of Israeli occupation will not bring peace to the Holy Land. If history is a guide, even if the Palestinians are dispossessed and disempowered by Israel and its patrons, every succeeding generation of Palestinians will persist in seeking their freedoms and fundamental rights, including their right to self-determination. Israel cannot rule indefinitely over a defiant Palestinian majority indefinitely. The peoples of the Arab and Muslim world, and other civilized nations, will not contemplate such outcomes.
• Four, the two-State formula, involving the establishment of a sovereign, contiguous and viable Palestinian State, with East Jerusalem as its capital, living side by side with Israel within recognized and accepted boundaries, offers the only solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The alternative to a two-State solution is an Israeli apartheid State or, even worse, a genocide of the Palestinian people. Even a world as morally compromised as ours will not tolerate either outcome. The peoples of the Arab and Muslim world, and other civilized nations, will not contemplate such outcomes. Nor, I believe, would the people of Israel, with their enduring memories of the Holocaust.

Mr. President,

The entire Middle East, and adjacent regions, will not see durable peace and stability while the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people, and the similar occupation and aggression of the people of Jammu & Kashmir, continue. This oppression of the Palestinians, Kashmiris and other Muslim populations are a major underlying cause of the rise of extremism and terrorism in recent decades. Just solutions to such oppression and injustice is essential to defeat and eliminate the terrorism which has spread across and beyond the Middle East.

Mr. President,

It is Pakistan's sincere hope that Israel and the Palestinians will embrace the two-State solution even as some cynics predict that it is already out of reach.

I thank you.