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Arab Parliament welcomes UN resolution to protect Palestinians
CAIRO, June 14 (BSS/XINHUA) – The Arab Parliament welcomed on Thursday the
recent resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to
protect the Palestinian people against Israeli assaults.
“The Arab Parliament welcomes the UNGA resolution issued Wednesday
regarding providing protection for the Palestinian people and condemning the
Israeli crimes against them,” said Arab Parliament Speaker Mashaal bin Fahm
al-Salami in a statement Thursday.
The Arab-backed resolution won 120 votes in the 193-member assembly, with
eight votes against and 45 abstentions.
“We thank all Arab, Islamic and friendly states that voted for the
resolution and we call for the implementation of this resolution and all
other UN resolutions related to Palestine,” Salami added.
The UNGA also rejected a U.S. demand to add a condemnation of attacks on
Israel by the Gaza-based Islamic Hamas movement.
The resolution was passed during the General Assembly’s 10th Emergency
Special Session entitled “Illegal Israeli action in occupied East Jerusalem
and the rest occupied Palestinian territory.”
Being Israel’s strongest ally, Washington has recently vetoed a similar
Kuwait-drafted resolution submitted to the UN Security Council (UNSC)
although it won 10 votes in the 15-member council.
UNGA resolutions express strong political will of the international
community but they are not legally binding, unlike UNSC resolutions.
At least 127 unarmed Palestinian protesters have been killed, including 16
children, and 13,000 more injured by Israeli forces since late March, when
the Palestinians started marches near the Gaza-Israel borders demanding the
right of return for some 750,000 refugees.
The confrontation was aggravated by the U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem in
May, after President Donald Trump declared the disputed holy city as Israel’s
capital in December 2017.
The decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been going on since the
Western-backed creation of Israel by occupying Palestinian territories in
1948.
The international community blames Israel for the deadlock of the peace
process with the Palestinians due to its settlement expansion policy on
occupied Palestinian territories.
The Palestinians seek to establish an independent state with East Jerusalem
as its capital city in the light of the UN-proposed two-state solution based
on the pre-1967 borders.
BSS/XINHUA/ARS/1717 hrs