Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) to establish a special regime of protection for the Palestinian people and pledged to continue joining international organizations and conventions “in order to safeguard our rights and protect our people,” in an address to a special council session convened on Wednesday.
Israel's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Eviatar Manor, hours later rejected the remarks made by Abbas at the "scandalous meeting," and accused the UNHRC of allowing itself to be used as a "stage for propaganda.
In his address to the UNHRC in Geneva, Abbas called the recent escalation in the region the “inevitable outcome” of the "violations" committed by Israel and blamed the “failure of the international community to redress this injustice and distress suffered by or people.”
The Palestinian president reiterated that his authority “cannot continue to be bound, unilaterally, by the agreements signed with Israel while it fails to show commitment thereto.”
“Israel breaches, systematically and regularly, the rules and principle of international law and the international humanitarian law. It acts a state above the law, undeterred, unpunished and unaccountable,” Abbas said.
“It is unacceptable for the current situation to persist,” he added, “for it would kill the last shred of hope for the two-state-solution-based peace.”
Abbas thanked the UNHRC for its “valuable and objective positions and efforts intended to enable our people to enjoy their freedom and right to self-determination” and for “adopting important resolutions… which unveil the critical human rights conditions lived in the occupied state of Palestine and the suffering of our people resultant from the Israeli occupation and its atrocities and aggressive practices."
The Palestinian president also thanked the 137 nations that have recognized Palestinian statehood and called on those who hadn’t to do so. “Those who say that they support the two-state solution must recognize two states, not only one,” he said.
Abbas urged Israel to “have the courage to make rightful and honest decisions before it is too late, to make the two-state solution a concrete reality, because this might be the last convenient chance for this solution."
“I extend an honest invitation to the Israeli people and invite them for a right and justice-based peace,” he said. “Peace is affordable and within reach, and the answer is simple; your state must end its occupation of our land, your oppressive war machine must stop its aggression of our people, settlement activities must be ceased and the criminal acts of settlers must be stopped."
The Palestinian president concluded his address by lambasting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks linking the Nazi-era Jerusalem mufti to the Holocaust, saying, “When the Israeli prime minister tries to absolve Adolf Hitler from his ugly crimes against the Jews and blame Palestinians for these crime, he is trying thereby to justify the crimes committed against the Palestinian people… Regrettably, how short a human’s memory span is, when a victim becomes the victimizer.”
Israel's ambassador to UN: The Human Rights Council has forgotten that the right to life is universal
Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations, Eviatar Manor, responded to Abbas’ speech a few hours later in an address to diplomats, in which he said that the UNHRC was allowing itself be used as a “stage for propaganda, defamation of [Israel] a Member State” as a “courtesy to President Abbas, the head of a fictitious state.”
“The Human Rights Council has forgotten that the right to life is a basic human right and that it is universal. Jews in Israel have it too. And we shall exercise our right to life.”
Manor rejected Abbas’ claims that Israel was to blame for the recent wave of violence, as well as accusations that it was trying to change the status quo on the Temple Mount. On the contrary, he said, it is the Palestinians who are inciting violence on the contentious site and subsequently lying in the face of the international community.
“These brutal attacks are motivated for the most part by the lie, widely circulated in the Palestinian and Arab media channels and social network sites, that Israel allegedly threatens the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” Manor told diplomats.“
The unrest began on the eve of the Jewish New Year, when a group of some 150 radical Islamist operatives rioted on the Temple Mount, Manor said. “The operatives clearly planned their aggression many days ahead… The riots continued for three consecutive days, throughout the Jewish festival… This was the spark which ignited the present wave of violence,” Manor added. Over this time, 12 Israelis have been killed and hundreds wounded, Manor said, alongside 58 Palestinian dead, half of them the perpetrators themselves.
Manor pointed at remarks made by Palestinian officials, including Abbas, as having agitated the tensions and incited violence. He quoted an interview given to PA television by Abbas on September 16, in which the Palestinian president said, “We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem.”
Furthermore, Manor said, Abbas’ claim that Israel carried out extrajudicial killings of Palestinians was untrue. The Palestinians had pointed to 13-year-old Ahmad Mansarrah as such an example; Mansarrah, who had stabbed an Israeli child, was not killed, Manor pointed out – the Palestinian teen was taken to an Israeli hospital, where he is now recovering from his wounds.
“Israel is fully committed to safeguarding the status quo on Temple Mount,” Manor said, emphasizing Prime Minister Netanyahu’s statement that "Israel will continue to enforce its long-standing policy: Muslims pray on the Temple Mount; non-Muslims visit the Temple Mount.”
“What is needed now in order to calm the situation and the violence is clarity,” Manor told the UNHRC. “Alll sides must make it clear that the status quo has not, is not and will not be changed.”
“I believe the truth is out, but the fabricated lie is a powerful weapon and erases memory,” Manor said.
