Pakistan welcomes UNHRC resolution on Israel

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Friday welcomed the adoption of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution, led by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), in response to grave violations of international law and human rights by Israel.

“Pakistan stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people and shares the international community’s expectation for effective implementation of this resolution to ensure respect for international law as well as for rights and dignity of the people of Palestine,” the Foreign Office said.

The UN Human Rights Council decided on Thursday to create an open-ended international investigation into violations surrounding the latest Gaza violence, and into “systematic” abuses in the Palestinian territories and inside Israel.

The resolution, which passed with 24 of the council’s 47 members in favour, will spur an unprecedented level of scrutiny on abuses and their “root causes” in the decades-long Middle East conflict.

The text, which was presented by Pakistan on behalf of the OIC, was debated during a special one-day council session focused on the surge in deadly violence between Israelis and Palestinians this month.

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, in a tweet on Friday, acknowledged in this regard the untiring efforts of Ambassador Munir Akram at the United Nations and Pakistan’s ambassador in Geneva, Ambassador Khalil Hashmi, for leaving “no stone unturned in their diplomacy for the just cause of Palestine”.

Before a truce took hold last Friday, Israeli air strikes and artillery fire on Gaza killed 254 Palestinians, including 66 children, and wounded more than 1,900 people in 11 days of conflict, the health ministry in Gaza says.

Rockets and other fire from Gaza claimed 12 lives in Israel, including one child and an Arab-Israeli teenager, medics say. Some 357 people in Israel were wounded.