UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan on Thursday called on countries shielding Israel at the UN Security Council to urgently reconsider their policies, warning that such support has enabled “mass carnage” of Palestinians in Gaza.
“The occupying power’s apologists must introspect and objectively assess the consequences of their policies,” Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, told the 15-member Council.
“What else is complicity? In fact, impunity has become Israel’s shield – and this Council’s silence, its enabler,” he said, stressing that the Council “cannot remain a bystander” and must act decisively to fulfill its Charter responsibility for maintaining international peace and security.
Highlighting the scale of destruction in Gaza, the envoy noted that most of the more than 62,000 people killed were women and children. “This cannot be collateral damage. It is mass carnage,” he declared.
Ambassador Ahmad said that Israel is carrying out “a campaign of ethnic cleansing in plain sight” through mass killings, displacement, famine, settlements, and the systematic destruction of habitable land. He also condemned Israel’s planned full occupation of Gaza City, calling it a “blueprint for further humanitarian catastrophe” that could displace up to one million more people.
At the same meeting, senior UN officials painted a grim picture of the worsening crisis. Ramiz Alakbarov, UN Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, said the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory had deteriorated “to levels not seen in recent history.”
Meanwhile, Joyce Msuya, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, confirmed that famine is now occurring in Gaza, citing the findings of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Famine Review Committee.
