UN Sec-Gen urges Palestinians to unite, asks Obama to give issue utmost priority

By NNN-KUNA,

United Nations : Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged all Palestinian factions to unite for peace and vowed to urge the new US Administration to give the Palestinian issue “utmost priority.”


Support TwoCircles

“At this crucial time in their quest for freedom and statehood, the people of Palestine deserve their leaders to put nation above faction, and the pursuit of peace above all other considerations,” Ban told the annual ceremony Monday commemorating the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People that falls on Nov 29.

He said that he would be urging the new US Administration to be “actively engaged in this process from the outset, as a matter of utmost priority.”

He indicated that the present negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis “have been promising and substantial. This must be an irreversible process,” but at the same time, “not open-ended.”

He noted that 2009 “must be the year” that the preparations for peace “bear fruit. Let us all work constructively, tirelessly and consistently to help the parties make this happen. The Palestinian people need and deserve no less.”

On the ongoing blockade on Gaza, he called on Israel to allow sufficient supplies to reach the population “instead of wrongly punishing them.”

Condemning the rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas, Ban called on Israel at the same time to cease settlement activity, remove outposts and open Palestinian institutions in East Jerusalem and to refrain from unilateral actions in Jerusalem, such as demolitions and evictions.

General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto said “what’s being done against the Palestinian people, although different, seems to me to be a version of the hideous policy of apartheid.”

He recalled that 60 years ago, Israel was founded and “shamefully, there is still no Palestinian state to celebrate.”

He said the word is witnessing decades of terrible conditions endured throughout the occupied Palestinian land, “yet the promise — the right — of the Palestinian people to a homeland remains as elusive as ever.”

“The United Nations has an ongoing responsibility to resolve the question of Palestine in all its aspects and in accordance with international law. Let us be sure that this not become a permanent responsibility,” he said.

Reading a message from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyadh Al-Maliki told the meeting that the failure to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not the result of “misfortune, it is the result of intentional obstruction of the peace process and determination by the Israeli side to impose a solution that does not guarantee the return of our land and the rights of our refugees and the possibility of establishing a contiguous and viable state.”

He warned that a just and lasting solution to the conflict should not be a “partial solution that will create the fertile environment for a continuation of the conflict that is more intense and deadly and could spread in the region, God forbid, if we don’t all exert the efforts necessary to contain it and eliminate its causes.”

Highlighting the Israeli practices in the occupied land, he called on the UN to “continue its central role until the realisation of the rights of the Palestinian people.”

Many UN envoys read out statements in the meeting on behalf of their presidents or foreign ministers underlying the untenable situation in Gaza and the West Bank.

The solidarity day with the Palestinian people, organised by the UN Palestinian Rights Committee, has been celebrated annually on Nov 29 as per a General Assembly resolution adopted in 1977. This year the date has been moved to Nov 24 because most diplomats and UN officials will be attending the Finance for Development Conference opening on Nov 29 in Doha.

SUPPORT TWOCIRCLES HELP SUPPORT INDEPENDENT AND NON-PROFIT MEDIA. DONATE HERE