Statement by Juan Antonio Fernández Palacios, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Cuba, on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement, on agenda item 7 “Human Rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories”.
Geneva, 18 September 2008
Mr. President,
I have the honor to address the Human Rights Council on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement.
Mr. President,
Sixty years have passed since the Al-Nakba (The disaster) in 1948. After that fatidic date, the Palestinian people became a stateless and dispossessed people, dispersed and displaced from their homeland. Today, more than half of the Palestinian people continue to live in exile in refugee camps throughout the region and in the Diaspora. In this regard, NAM solemnly commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian Al-Nakba this year, reaffirm their solidarity with the Palestinian people on this occasion and redouble their collective efforts for the just and peaceful resolution of the question of Palestine in all its aspects.
Since 1967, for more than forty-one years now, the Palestinian people and other occupied Arab territories have continuously suffered under Israel’s brutal military occupation of their land. They continue to be denied their fundamental human rights, including the right to self-determination and the right to return.
All this time, Israel has been violating international law, including international humanitarian and human rights law. Moreover, Israel has carried out deliberate and unlawful policies and practices aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and nature of the lands under occupation, as well as the illegal annexation of territories, particularly through the implementation of its illegal colonial settlement policy and, since 2003, through the illegal construction of a Wall.
In the occupied Syrian Golan the situation remains a cause of serious concern. The Israeli occupation continues to violate the human rights of Syrian citizens in complete disregard to international humanitarian law and human rights law, not to mention its none adherence to Human Rights Council resolutions, the last of which was 7/30.
NAM would also like to highlight the brutal practices in Israeli occupation prisons, and expressed their grave concern at the inhuman conditions of the Palestinian and Arab detainees in the Israeli prisons, including the prisoners from the occupied Syrian Golan, which have been held captive in violation of their civil, political, economic, cultural and social rights.
NAM also calls upon Israel, the occupying power, to reopen the Quneitra entry point, to facilitate the visits of the Syrian citizens under Israeli occupation to their motherland, Syria.
Mr. President,
The Non-Aligned Movement regrets the loss of all innocent lives. At the same time, the Movement calls upon the parties to urgently resume peace process negotiations on all tracks on the basis of international law and relevant United Nations resolutions, in order to comprehensively resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Arab-Israeli conflict as a whole.
In this connection, NAM takes note the timely international conferences convened at Annapolis in November 2007 and in Paris in December 2007, and calls for serious and continuous follow-up efforts. The Movement reiterates, inter alia, its support to convening the follow-up Conference before the end of 2008 in Moscow to take stock of progress achieved in the peace process.
As adopted by the Heads of States or Government in the Declaration on Palestine during the XIV Summit in Havana and the XV Ministerial Conference held in Tehran last July, the Non-Aligned Movement reaffirms its strong commitment to continue supporting the Palestinian people to bring an end to Israel’s occupation, and reasserts its commitment to a just and peaceful solution of the conflict and to the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and to sovereignty in their independent state of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
I thank you.
(Cubaminrex- Embacuba Ginebra)