UNITED NATIONS, Dec 1: The government on Sunday strongly condemned recent killings of innocent Palestinian children and the shooting of a United Nations Relief and Works Agency official by Israeli forces.
Speaking at the UN General Assembly, the country’s permanent representative, Munir Akram, said Israel must implement the Fourth Geneva Convention, which stated that protected people must not be “wilfully killed, tortured, ill-treated, subjected to corporal punishment or suffer humiliating and degrading treatment.”
For two years now, he said, the Middle East had been in the grip of escalating and often brutal violence.
“There has been an unprecedented series of deliberately inflicted set-backs to the peace process. A final settlement in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions 242, 338 and 1397, and the Saudi peace plan, endorsed by the Beirut-Arab summit, appears to be further away than a year ago,” he said.
He said Pakistan deplored the repeated manifestations of Israel’s complete disregard for its obligations under international law.
He said killings of innocent Palestinian children and the shooting of the UNRWA official by Israeli security forces must be condemned.
In Article 33, the convention stated that protected people must not be subjected to “collective punishment or reprisals against their persons or property,” yet, destruction of houses and uprooting of Palestinian families remained the favoured mode of Israeli coercion, he said.
Israel’s violation of the Geneva Convention regarding provision of social and economic facilities to the occupied people had a more pervasive impact on the Palestinian people, he said.
The envoy said Israel was also violating the provisions of international human rights instruments enjoining respect for the right to life and prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment, even during times of public emergencies.
“International law also prohibits the transfer of the civilian population of an occupying power to the territories under its occupation. The persistent establishment of Israeli settlements is a significant and central reason for the aggressive posture and actions of the Israeli occupation forces and the dogged resistance of the Palestinian people. It was also a major reason for the derailment of the Oslo peace process,” he said.—APP