November 29th is the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people. This is the day of global solidarity with the courage, persistence, freedom-seeking and justice-seeking of the people who have stood against evil forces for more than seven decades.
The forces that brazenly take pride in taking the lives of young children, killing defenceless people and destroying people’s houses and not looking even slightly embarrassed. The United Nations declared this day, in 1977, to help the Palestinian people, but it is insufficient. Last year on this day, the number of Palestinians killed was 14,000, but now we are facing 53,000 dead and missing and more than 100,000 injured, more than 60 per cent are women, children and the elderly.
For more than a year, the world has looked to the United Nations to deal with the genocide of the Palestinian people, to control the fire of war that has spread to other countries, and to hand over the jailer of the world’s largest open prison to justice.
Unfortunately, during this period, all freedom-seekers and awakened consciences in the world have witnessed the inaction of the United Nations and impunity of the Israeli administration. Today’s conditions in Palestine and other countries affected by the attacks of the Israeli regime prove that the most effective and fastest measure to sympathise with the Palestinian people is to cut off international support for this cancerous tumour. Israel has shown its lack of commitment to international values by tearing up the United Nations Charter, a covenant accepted by the organisation’s members.
It will be recorded in history that the massacre of civilians, attacks on hospitals, cutting off water, food, fuel and medicine on the people of Gaza, the displacement of thousands of people, the killing of journalists and employees of international organisations, and the martyrdom of legends such as martyr Hassan Nasrallah, martyr Ismail Haniyeh and martyr Yahya Sinwar took place with the complicity of Western governments, and that every time efforts were made to stop the war, the hand of the US representative in the UN Security Council was raised to thwart these efforts.
The injustices perpetrated on the Palestinian people require global attention and action, while silence in the face of them is tantamount to the normalisation of evil and cruelty that will challenge the future of humanity.
If today the UN and especially the Security Council cannot find a way to deal with the crimes of the occupiers of the Palestinian land, the credibility and dignity of this organisation will be seriously jeopardised.
Today, we emphasize our commitment to fully support the cause of free and independent Palestine. We are ready to cooperate with all countries committed to the principles of freedom, equality, justice and human rights, and considers the defence of the Palestinian people a demand of all the free people of the world.
The Islamic Republic of Iran still believes that the only principled solution to the Palestinian issue is the return of the refugees and holding a referendum among the original Palestinian people, including Muslims, Christians and Jews, based on democratic principles and international law.
-The writer is President of the Islamic Republic of Iran