By Latheef Farook
While the settler colonial state of Israel,forcefully planted on Palestinian lands , intensifies its slaughter of Palestinians in Rafah, in New York the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution for the UN security council to support the full membership of Palestine into the United Nations.
According to agencies the historic resolution was passed with 143 votes in favour and nine against – including the US and Israel – while 25 countries abstained. It does not give the Palestinians full UN membership, but simply recognizes them as qualified to join.The irony is Israel created for Jewish settlers on Palestinians land was admitted as full UN member in 1948 while Palestinians, sons and daughters of the soil, still struggle to become a full UN member.
According to the resolution text, Palestine now has the right to introduce and co-sponsor proposals as well as amendments within the assembly. Palestine can also be seated among member states and raise procedural motions, among other rights.The latest resolution also serves as a further reminder on where much of the world stands on whether Palestine should be granted membership in the UN.
Prior to the vote, Palestine’s ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour, told the UNGA that “voting ‘Yes’ is the right thing to do and I can assure you, you and your country for years to come will be proud to have stood for freedom, justice and peace in this darkest hour.”
The Palestinian push for full UN membership comes seven months into Israel’s on going genocide in the Gaza Strip, and as Israel is expanding illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli’s blood thirsty prime minister Netanyahu has been speaking about Rafah massacre for months. The West could have stopped it if they wanted to. However they didn’t..In fact no Arab country,took any step to protect the traumatized Palestinians.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized the Western countries for remaining silent on the massacre in Palestine. Erdogan said, “It is shame that Western countries, which always voice for human rights and freedoms, remain silent on the massacre in Palestine.”
“We are faced with unprecedented barbarism in history, where hospitals, schools, and refugee camps are bombed and civilians are massacred,” he added stressing that it is vital to deliver fuel to places in urgent need, especially hospitals in Gaza.
Meanwhile the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese warned that Israel’s attack on the southern Gaza city of Rafah would be an “attack on the civilian population” and a “massacre.” “From a legal point of view, there is no justification whatsoever to continue this operation. There should be a cease-fire,” she added.
In Geneva UN experts warned that the Israeli military’s ground operation targeting eastern Rafah is a culmination of a seven-month long campaign to forcibly transfer and destroy Gaza’s population, The long-threatened Rafah invasion must not be seen as a foregone conclusion,” the experts said. “Israel must halt this assault.”
The so-called ‘expanded humanitarian area’ of Al Mawasi, where the Israeli military has instructed evacuees to go, is already without sufficient food, water, medicine, hygiene products, electricity, shelter and access to education for children; it cannot cope with a population influx. “The forcible transfer of civilians, mostly women and more than 600,000 children—including wounded children—from Rafah pushes Palestinians across Gaza further into critically desperate humanitarian circumstances,” the experts said.
Over the past seven months, Israel has repeatedly attacked areas where evacuees were instructed to go.“While past violations must be duly investigated and accounted for, new abuses must be prevented,” they said.
The World Socialist Web Site condemned the Israeli assault on Rafah, and called for the mobilization of opposition throughout the world .For several days, Israel has been carrying out non-stop bombings of the city that have killed thousands of people, accompanied by ground attacks in eastern Rafah and the Rafah crossing into Egypt.
Israel ordered over 100,000 starving and desperate people to evacuate eastern Rafah, without offering them safe passage or anywhere to go. All of this is preparatory to a massive and bloody onslaught.
Over one million people are crowded into an area in a series of sprawling tent cities with no sources of running water or electricity. The city contains over 600,000 children, most of whom have already been displaced multiple times and all of whom have been deprived of clean water and starved of food for half a year.
For six days, no food, water or medicine have been allowed into Gaza, most of which is currently suffering from “full-blown famine.” Gaza is home to 80 percent of the hungriest people in the world, according to relief agencies.
The assault on Rafah is being funded, armed and politically directed by US imperialism. Over the past six months, the White House has sent over one hundred arms shipments to Israel. On top of the three billion dollars the US sends every year, Biden last month signed a $14.3 billion supplemental spending package to fund and arm the genocide.
Biden’s sponsorship of the Gaza genocide does make the “values” of American imperialism clear. These are the “values” of mass murder of women and children, covered over with absurd lies and moralizing platitudes. These “values” are upheld by the entire US political establishment, from the fascist-led Republican party to the pseudo-left apologists for genocide in the DSA.
Every statement by the Biden administration about the genocide has the character of a self-indictment. In December, Biden declared that the Netanyahu government is carrying out “indiscriminate bombing” and is seeking “retribution… against all Palestinians.”
The White House then proceeded to send billions of dollars in bombs to the government carrying out this “indiscriminate bombing” targeting “all Palestinians.” In addition to multiple arms shipments, Biden signed a bill that provided $14.3 billion in weapons, of which US officials have pledged to spend “every dollar.”