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The international community must "shoulder its responsibility" and take action against Israel's genocide in Gaza, Palestinian Foreign Affairs Minister Varsen Aghabekian Shahin told Al Jazeera ahead of an emergency United Nations Security Council session.
The 15-member council is set to convene at the UN headquarters in New York on Sunday to discuss the escalating crisis in the Gaza Strip, following Israel's newly announced plan to seize Gaza City, which has drawn global condemnation, Al Jazeera reported. "I expect that the international community stands for international law and international humanitarian law," Aghabekian Shahin told Al Jazeera. She described the ongoing situation as "nothing but a genocide," adding it is part of Israel's "expansionist ideology that wants to take over the entirety of the occupied State of Palestine," according to Al Jazeera. The Israeli security cabinet recently approved plans to seize Gaza City, forcibly displacing nearly one million Palestinians to concentration zones in southern Gaza, intensifying an already dire humanitarian crisis, Al Jazeera noted. Palestinians have rejected the forced displacement, while human rights groups and the UN have warned of further mass casualties if the plan proceeds. Israel remains firm on its plan, stating it aims to "free Gaza from Hamas," the report said. The United States, Israel's top global ally, has not commented directly on the Gaza City seizure plan. However, US President Donald Trump indicated earlier this week that he would not block Israel's efforts to take control of all Gaza, Al Jazeera added. Aghabekian Shahin said the US must consider Palestinian rights if it wants to help reach a peace solution. "There will be no peace in Israel-Palestine, or the region for that matter, or even the world at large, if the rights of the Palestinians are not respected," she told Al Jazeera, stressing the need for the establishment of a Palestinian state. She also criticised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent comments about Gaza's governance, in which he proposed a "peaceful civilian administration" separate from the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. "The one that has the legal and the political authority on Gaza today is the PLO," Aghabekian Shahin said, referring to the Palestine Liberation Organization. "If Gaza wants to come back to the core, which is the entirety of the Palestinian land, then it has to come under the control and governance of the Palestinian Authority, the PLO," she added, Al Jazeera reported. Condemning the international community's failure to act amid escalating Israeli military and settler attacks in the occupied West Bank, Aghabekian Shahin said, "It is the inaction that has emboldened the Israelis, including the settlers, to do whatever they have been doing for the last six decades, since day one of the 1967 occupation." She warned, "The times are very dangerous now, and it's important that the international community shoulders its responsibility. The impunity with which Israel was happily moving should stop," Al Jazeera reported. (ANI)
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