UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan on Thursday joined international calls for Israel to halt settlement expansion and abandon attempts to annex occupied Palestinian territory, warning that the E1 settlement project threatened the territorial viability of a future Palestinian state.
Speaking at a UN Security Council open debate on the situation in the Middle East, Pakistan’s Acting Permanent Representative, Ambassador Usman Jadoon, said international support for a two-state solution must be accompanied by concrete measures to preserve Palestine’s territorial integrity and viability.
“The two-state solution remains the internationally agreed framework and the indispensable foundation for just and lasting peace,” he said, adding that Resolution 2803, the Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict and the New York Declaration provided mutually reinforcing frameworks for advancing that objective.
Mr Jadoon called for their full and good-faith implementation, warning that settlement expansion, settler violence, demolitions, land seizures and forced displacement were entrenching annexation and undermining the foundations of peace.
“All settlement activities must cease in accordance with resolution 2334; settler violence must be halted; and accountability ensured,” he said. He also condemned Israeli incursions into Al Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al Sharif and demanded respect for the historical and legal status quo of the holy sites.
On Gaza, Pakistan expressed concern over continued ceasefire violations, Palestinian deaths and restrictions on humanitarian access. Mr Jadoon warned that the approaching winter threatened to worsen the suffering of families living amid destruction without adequate shelter or essential services.
He called for the ceasefire to be fully upheld, humanitarian assistance to be delivered unhindered and at scale, and recovery and reconstruction to proceed without delay. Pakistan also stressed the need to support the work of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and demanded the release of withheld Palestinian revenues to enable the Palestinian Authority to fulfil its responsibilities.
Mr Jadoon rejected forced displacement and any attempt to fragment Gaza and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which he said constituted a single territorial unit. He called for a credible, time-bound and irreversible political process to end the Israeli occupation and establish an independent, sovereign, contiguous and viable Palestinian state on pre-1967 borders, with Al Quds Al Sharif as its capital.
The Palestinian representative, Deputy Permanent Observer Majed Bamya, accused Israel of continuing to kill Palestinians despite the ceasefire and questioned what he described as unequal international responses to Israeli and Palestinian casualties.
“If violence is an impasse, as we are often told, and I believe it is, how can Israeli militarism be justified while Palestinian pacifism is demanded?” he asked. Mr Bamya said Israel had squandered the international sympathy that followed the Hamas attacks of Oct 7, 2023, through the killing of Palestinians, including children, and the destruction of entire multigenerational families.
He said more than 1,000 Palestinians had been killed over three years in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, while Israeli settlers and soldiers continued to perpetrate violence. Although crediting US President Donald Trump’s intervention with helping secure the Gaza ceasefire.
France’s ambassador Jérôme Bonnafont also called for an end to Israeli settlement expansion, warning that the E1 project, settler violence and financial pressure on the Palestinian Authority were fuelling instability.
“The unchecked expansion of settlements — including the E1 project — the clear trajectory towards annexation, the systematic and unpunished acts of terror committed by settlers, and the financial strangulation of the Palestinian Authority all fuel instability, including for Israel itself,” he said.
France said it had introduced trade measures and was advocating similar action at the European level. It also urged the Palestinian Authority to hold legislative and presidential elections as soon as possible rather than wait until Sept 2027.
Britain echoed the criticism of Israeli settlement policy. Ambassador Sarah MacIntosh demanded an immediate halt to the E1 project, withdrawal of the relevant tender and an end to settlement expansion.
“The government of Israel must ensure compliance with its obligations under international humanitarian law and remove the current restrictions on this critical aid,” she said, referring to humanitarian assistance for Gaza. Britain also called for Hamas to disarm and dismantle its militant infrastructure and urged the Palestinian Authority to hold elections without delay.
The United States defended President Trump’s comprehensive Gaza peace plan, endorsed by Security Council Resolution 2803 (2025), saying its success depended on Hamas disarming and relinquishing its weapons.
Deputy Permanent Representative Jennifer Locetta said commissioners of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza had been appointed and trained, troops for the proposed International Stabilisation Force were prepared to deploy, and donors had committed $18 billion. “Nothing will be taken on trust,” she said, calling for independent verification of Hamas’s disarmament and the dismantling of tunnels and weapons depots.
Published in Dawn, October 16th, 2026
