UN Human Rights Council adopts resolutions against Israel’s human rights violations and settlement building activities in occupied Palestine, the occupied Syrian Golan

The UN Human Rights Council, during its 49th session on Friday, adopted a resolution condemning the Israeli occupation’s violations of human rights in the occupied Syrian Golan and calling on Israel to comply with relevant UN resolutions and stop its oppressive practices against citizens in Golan. 

The Council adopted another resolution reaffirming the illegality of the Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, including in East Al-Quds, and the occupied Syrian Golan.

The resolution called for putting an end to the Israeli occupation of the lands that have been occupied since 1967 and the Israeli settlement policies and urged an immediate halt of settlement building and expansion. 

In a statement during the session, Syria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations and International Organizations in Geneva Husam Al-Din Ala said that the Israeli occupation continues to violate the international law and human rights in Palestine and the occupied Syrian Golan and these violations continue to go without punishment due to the protection provided by Washington and its allies to this occupation entity.

 He reiterated that the Human Rights Council is in charge of documenting and condemning these violations and it shoulders a special responsibility towards holding the occupation’s authority responsible for these violations.

Ala thanked Pakistan for submitting the draft resolutions and thanked the countries that supported them.

The Syrian envoy said that the western countries have created baseless pretexts to justify their rejection of the resolutions and to deviate the world attention away from the core cause, stressing that the main issue proposed to the Council doesn’t politically target any party, but it has to do with the situation of human rights and the Israeli violations of international laws and human rights in occupied lands.

The Israeli occupation continues to commit systematic violations against the basic rights of the people in the occupied Golan and to violate all the resolutions issued by the main UN bodies that demanded “Israel” to end its occupation and comply with the relevant Security Council resolutions, including Resolution No. 497 of 1981, which affirms the illegality and invalidity of the Israeli occupation authority’s decision to impose its laws and its judicial and administrative mandate on the occupied Syrian Golan and which calls for cancelling these Israeli laws, Ala went on to say.

He pointed out that the establishment and expansion of settlements by the Israeli occupation  in the occupied Syrian Golan and the occupied Palestinian territories, especially in Al-Quds, in addition to the looting of the natural resources, the land confiscation and the displacement of residents aim at making a systematic demographic change in these areas and they constitute blatant human rights violations and a state of colonialism and annexation that represents a grave violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Ala stressed that the Israeli occupation government’s announcement of a plan to spend $317 million to build two new settlements and expand the already built settlements in the occupied Syrian  Golan stresses the occupation’s  blatant disregard for the rules of the international law, the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Security Council Resolution No. 497, and it constitutes a war crime that requires accountability.

Hamda Mustafa