Archbishop Atallah Hanna to ST: International community must not stand idly by as Israeli occupation violates human rights
Archbishop Atallah Hanna of Sebastia for the Greek Orthodox has appealed to the international community to adopt clear and straightforward stances towards the Israeli occupation’s crimes against the Palestinian people.
In a statement to the Syria Times e-newspaper, the archbishop criticized the weak stances of the so-called the international community towards the Palestinians, who are being attacked and suppressed by the occupation in Al-Quds [Jerusalem] and its neighborhoods.
“The so-called the international community stands idle in front of Israel’s dangerous violations of human rights and it just issues timid and useless statements,” he added, asserting that no one has the right to delete the rights of the Palestinian people.
“We urge free people around the world to stand by the Palestinian cause which is the cause of every free person regardless of their religious belonging or cultural or ethnic background,” the archbishop concluded.
All of the Israeli crimes regrettably happening with the full knowledge of the international community, which is witnessing these grave crimes, including the killing of innocent children, women and men, all in the name of entrenching the longest belligerent occupation in modern history.
Yet, the international community remains paralyzed despite repeated appeals by many governments, parliaments, civil society and peoples of conscience across the world to bring an end to this injustice, enabling Israel’s impunity to mutate at an alarming rate as international law and human lives are trampled and the prospects for a just peace are destroyed.
The scale of coordinated violations by Israeli occupation forces (IOF) and extremist Israeli settlers is reaching unprecedented levels, resulting in the cold-blooded killing of Palestinian civilians and the mass dispossession of our people as the Israeli government presses ahead with its illegal colonization enterprise, according to media reports.
On the 6th of August, an innocent Palestinian man was killed by the IOF, which responded with lethal force to the legitimate civilian protests against Israeli colonization schemes in the village of Beita. Emad Ali Dwaikat, age 37, was shot dead by the IOF as he protested alongside other villagers from Beita trying to save their land from confiscation and settlement. Emad was the father of four young children, four daughters who have now been orphaned by this criminal occupation, devastating his family and forever altering their lives.
728 letters regarding the ongoing crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, which constitutes the territory of the State of Palestine were sent to the UN. These letters, dated from 29 September 2000 (A/55/432-S/2000/921) to 23 July 2021 (A/ES-10/xxx-S/2021/xxx) constitute a basic record of the crimes being committed by Israel, the occupying Power, against the Palestinian people since September 2000, the Palestinian mission to UN recently said.
For all of these war crimes, acts of State terrorism and systematic human rights violations being committed against the Palestinian people, Israel, the occupying Power, must be held accountable and the perpetrators must be brought to justice.
Basma Qaddour
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