His Excellency Mr. Antonio Guterres

Secretary-General

The United Nations

U.N. Headquarters

New York, NY
USA

Re: The United Nations, the Palestinian Rights and the International Law; Is There a Way to Stop the Israeli Arrogance?

Honourable Secretary-General,

Allow us to express our profound thanks and gratitude to you for all the sincere efforts you have exerted to maintain international peace and security, protect the Charter of the United Nations and implement the General Assembly resolutions. Recognizing the importance of your role and the responsibility placed on you, we appeal to your Excellency to express our deep concern over the daunting challenges facing the Palestinian people, their just cause and usurped rights, especially the right of return and self-determination.

The long Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories has been the main obstacle facing our people. This is illustrated by the moral and material suffering caused to the Palestinian people. The occupation is not limited to the military presence of the occupying power in the Palestinian territories, but also extends to its ongoing aggressive practices of displacement of Palestinian civilians and expansion of Israeli settlements and denial of Palestinians' collective right to self-determination and the right to life, liberty, security and human dignity, which have been ratified by UN covenants and resolutions.

Israel has been systematically destroying Palestine’s cultural traditions and  its Christian  and Muslim  heritage  and obliterating Palestinian  cultural  expression, identity, and heritage before the ears and eyes of the international community and its active actors.

Since we are talking about the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, we would like to refer to several UN reports that called on the Israeli occupation authorities to put an end to the military invasion of the Gaza Strip, lift the illegal siege imposed on it, cease settlement construction and dismantle all existing settlements, and provide adequate compensation for the damage caused to the Palestinians. Those reports concluded that serious violations of international law are being committed in the occupied Palestinian territories, and that the general human rights situation in the Palestinian territories is of growing concern.

Therefore, it needs to be handled urgently. Such conclusions are to be found in the report of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (A/HRC/24/30) that was released in August 2013, the report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (A / HRC / 25/67) that was released in January 2014, and OCHA reports on the humanitarian situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Those reports,  the most recent of which  is the report of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry into violations committed during the marches of return (A/HRC/40/74),  demonstrated  serious  and persistent violations  of the rules of international humanitarian law and international human rights law that amount to war crimes, which indicates significant deterioration in the situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories over the past years, and affirms that impunity is the main obstacle in front of stopping this deterioration.

The legitimacy of resistance and struggle stems from the international recognition of the right of peoples to self-determination, attain their freedom and independence, and the  legitimacy of their struggle to  achieve this  in all  available means  and  is compatible with the Charter of the United Nations, in particular Article 1/2 and Article 55 of the Charter of the United Nations, in addition to the common article in the two International Covenants which recognized that peoples are free to determine their political fate and free to pursue their economic, social and cultural development, which provides a solid foundation for the legitimacy of the struggle of the Palestinian people for their freedom and independence. The United Nations General Assembly has devoted a number of resolutions that emphasize the right of Palestinian people to independence and self-determination, as well as legitimizing their struggle for this right, for example: Resolution 2535 of 10 December 1969 and Resolution 2672 of 8 December 1970 "To declare that the full respect for the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people is an indispensable element in establishing a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.", in addition to dozens of resolutions that affirm the inalienable rights  of the  Palestinian  people,  such  as  their  right  to  independence,  self-
determination and the struggle to do so by all possible means consistent with the Charter of the United Nations.

For decades, UNRWA has managed to keep the Palestinian refugee issue alive as a historical testimony to their tragedy, which makes it more than an UN-mandated institution for refugee relief, but as having a political and humanitarian role that keeps the refugee issue alive until they are allowed to return and be compensated.

The attempts led by the United States of America to dissolve UNRWA as part of its efforts to dismantle the Palestinian constants, particularly the refugee file, constitute a disregard for the relevant international resolutions, and has security implications that may affect the entire region, in terms of its threat to the lives and dignity of the Palestinian refugees, which requires an active role in renewing the mandate of 

UNRWA and urging the world countries to do so during the 74th session of the General Assembly. It also requires providing sources of funds to help UNRWA overcome its funding crisis and ensure that sufficient financial resources are made available to enable it to meet its obligations towards Palestine refugees, and to ensure that UNRWA's special budget is included in the United Nations General Budget.

Mr. Secretary-General,

The settlement issue is one of the most prominent violations against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Jerusalem, its seriousness comes from being a complex and overlapping violation, starting with the confiscation of land by military force, the deportation of its original inhabitants, then the extensive demolition and destruction of property, leading to the replacement of the citizens of the Occupying Power in the lands of the original inhabitants. The Israeli occupation authorities seek to change the demographic reality and historical identity of the occupied Palestinian territories in general and the occupied city of Jerusalem in particular. Although the General Assembly passed more than 60 resolutions that condemn the Israeli settlement operations as one of the aspects of the Israeli violations in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967, in addition to six resolutions issued by the Security Council on the same issue, this did not discourage the Israeli occupation authorities from continuing the policy of confiscating the Palestinian territories in favor of the establishment and expansion of settlements, where the number of settlers in the West Bank increased in 2018 to approximately 413,000 settlers.

This was reflected in the practices and terror of the Israeli settlers, as happened in the burning of the Dawabsheh family and the young Abu Khadir. According to reports issued by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) the rate of the weekly attacks by settlers on Palestinians and their property since the beginning of 2018 has risen, reaching an average of 5 attacks weekly, compared to 3 in 2017, in addition to the brutal killings carried out by the Israeli army outside the framework of the law, the most recent was the killing of Ms. Nayfa Mohammed Kaabneh, 50, on 19 September 2019 at Qalandia checkpoint.

The  settlement  policy  of the  Israeli  occupation  authorities  in  Jerusalem  has accelerated. This policy continues within the framework of an institutional system based on persecution and systematic control against the Palestinian population, since US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of the Occupying Power, which constituted - and still - a blatant violation of all international conventions and norms that affirmed the international legal status that governs the city of occupied Jerusalem.

In February 2017, and in order to tighten the control of the occupation authorities on the Palestinian land in the West Bank, the Israeli Knesset approved what is known as the "Regulation Law" or the "Settlement Bleaching Law", which deals with the West Bank settlement retroactively by allowing the continued use of privately owned land for settlement purposes in the West Bank, supported by the Israeli Supreme Court. It also passed a racist law that crossed all the red lines, called the "National Law of the Jewish People", which denies the relationship of the Palestinian people to their historical homeland, ignores their right to self-determination and historical narrative, inevitably leads to the establishment of one racist state (apartheid state),  and abrogates the two-state solution.

The Gaza Strip has witnessed an unprecedented aggravation of the humanitarian situation since the third Israeli aggression against it in the summer of 2014. The Israeli occupation forces have continued to impose a land and sea blockade on the Gaza Strip which has a population of nearly two million people for nearly thirteen years, since the Hamas movement won in the legislative elections, constituting the worst and longest collective punishment in recent history. This situation continues with the knowledge of the Quartet, of which the United Nations is a member, and is therefore responsible for the deterioration of the living and humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip, to the extent that it has declared that the Gaza Strip will not be a viable place for living by 2020.

Despite the claim of the Israeli occupation forces to ease the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip, it continues to control the Kerem Shalom commercial outlet, imposes a ban on the export of goods and products from the Gaza Strip, and continues to manipulate the fishing area off the shores of the Gaza Strip, sometimes up to 3 nautical miles! It also imposes severe restrictions on the movement of Gazans through the Beit Hanoun (Erez)  checkpoint, which allows,  in a narrow,  selective and humiliating manner, limited groups to move through it in clear violation of its legal obligations as an occupying power. This reflected negatively on the right to education and the right to health care in the Gaza Strip, led to an increase in unemployment to 52% in 2018, and an increase in poverty and extreme poverty to 65%.

As a result of the above facts, and the inability of the international community to force the Israeli occupation to implement its decisions, especially the need to lift the siege on the Gaza Strip, and after the exclusion of the right of return from any discussion on Palestine, the Palestinians decided to organize popular marches that end with peaceful assemblies near the separation fence with the Gaza Strip, with the participation of all Palestinian people, in order to express their adherence to their right of return and self-determination in accordance with international resolutions and laws. The marches of return and breaking the siege were a model of peaceful popular resistance. The events on the land have absolutely proved the absence of any military activities in the gatherings of the marches of return, and there was no evidence that would make the use of excessive force by the Israeli occupation forces legal. In its report (A/HRC/40/74), the United Nations Commission confirmed that there were reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli soldiers had committed violations of international humanitarian law and human rights that could constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity.

The UN General Assembly is holding its 74th session these days amid a heavy set of challenges that have burdened the Palestinians, where their inalienable rights are violated by the Israeli racist policies and the US resolutions that deny Palestinian rights and seek to stabilize the occupation as a fait accompli in clear violation of international resolutions.

We are appealing to you today, guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and relevant international resolutions, and stressing that the continued denial of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, especially the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and return to their homes and property from which they were displaced, and to gain their freedom and independence, undermines the chances for peace, leads to further frustration among the Palestinian people, and weakens their belief in the effectiveness of the international system.

Our  Palestinian  people  places  great  hopes  on  you  as  representatives  of the international will, and looks forward to see you play your moral and legal role in protecting the Palestinian people's rights and exhaust all possible means, including the activation of Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, to restore international peace and security, and to empower the Palestinian people to their rights and aspirations of freedom, independence, return and self-determination.

Islamic Resistance Movement - Hamas

Palestine