NEW YORK: His Highness the Amir of the State of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani participated in the opening session of the 79th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), held on Tuesdayin New York.
The session was attended by Their Majesties, Highnesses and Excellencies heads of state and government and heads of delegations and governmental and non-governmental organizations.
HH the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani delivered a speech at the session.
The speech reads as follows:
In the Name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful Your Excellency, President of the General Assembly, Your Excellency, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Honorable Audience, May the peace, mercy and blessings of God be upon you, At the outset, I would like to congratulate HE Mr Philemon Yang on assuming the presidency of the 79th session of the General Assembly, wishing him every success in his tasks. And I express appreciation to HE Mr Dennis Francis for his efforts during his presidency of the previous session. And we commend the prominent role played by HE Mr António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, in strengthening its role and achieving its lofty goals.
Mr. President, The blatant aggression that befalls the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip today is the most barbaric, heinous and extensive in breaching human values, international charters and norms. This is not a war within the international relations’ well-known and common concept of war, but rather a crime of genocide by means of using the most sophisticated weapons against a people besieged in a detention camp where there is no escape from the barrage of aerial bombing. Verily, the resolutions, condemnations and reports have been exhausted, and nothing is left behind except the undeterred, ongoing and premeditated stark crime, that victimizes children, women and the elderly.
We oppose violence and the targeting of innocent civilians by any party, but after a year of the war, and with all that has been and is still being perpetrated in it, it is no longer tenable to talk about Israel's right to defend itself in this context without being complicit in justifying the crime. It is no longer plausible for any official to claim that he does not know, thanks to the well-known facts and reports issued by international organizations about the bombing of schools and hospitals and weaponizing access to food and medicine, in addition to the published and publicly uttered intentions of Israeli leaders. Therefore, the failure to intervene to stop the aggression is a major scandal. Ladies and
Gentlemen, Every year I stand on this podium and begin my speech by talking about the Palestinian cause, the absence of justice, the perils of believing that it can be neglected, and the illusions of making peace without a just solution. I have done so every year at a time when the Palestinian cause has become absent from the speeches of major powers’ representatives in our world. There are those who are tempted by the possibility of either marginalizing this issue to get rid of its burden, or seeing it vanish without resolving it, but the Palestinian cause is resistant to marginalization because it is an issue of indigenous people on their own land and who are subjected to a settler-colonial occupation. This occupation has taken the form of an apartheid system in the 21st century. Can this be overlooked?
The Palestinian cause will remain lingering in place, except in two cases, either the end of the occupation or the disappearance of the Palestinian people. However, it seems that there are those in Israel who entertain wishful thinking to eliminate these people. The ongoing Israeli aggression for nearly a year is nothing but a result of the absence of sincere political will, deliberate international failure to resolve the Palestinian issue with a just solution, and insistence of the occupying Israeli authorities to impose a fait accompli on the Palestinians and the world with all types of force.
The ongoing brutal war has fired a coup de grace at international legitimacy and inflicted serious damage on the credibility of the post-World War II concepts on which the international community was founded. As if the dire consequences of this approach, which are visible before our eyes, are not enough to prove that ignoring a just solution is conducive to disaster, we discover, to our disbelief, that some are still trying to find innovative measures to run Gaza after the war, with or without authority, only on the basis of security considerations (and what is meant in this respect, of course, is the security of the occupation, not the security of those who are languishing under the occupation itself).
It is the same mindset that led from one disaster to another. It is the approach that wants to tailor the entire region to fit Israel’s size while looking for circumventions to avoid ending the occupation and work on imposing the rule of one people over another by force. Is it reasonable that even after this disaster, the major countries with the ability to influence the course of events are unable to reach a conclusion of the necessity to stop the war and pivot towards a just solution immediately instead of innovatively working on formulations to evade it? The end of the occupation and the Palestinian people exercising their right to self-determination is neither a favour nor a gift from anyone.
Unfortunately, the Security Council has failed to implement its ceasefire resolution in the Gaza Strip and to refrain from granting the state of Palestine full membership status in the United Nations despite the General Assembly's adoption of a resolution supporting Palestine's request for UN membership last May. The state of Palestine's full UN membership neither establishes its sovereignty nor ends the occupation, but at least sends a message to the far-right government involved in challenging international legitimacy, that force does not eliminate rights.
Talking about such a step harming the peace process is simply eyewash, because there is no Israeli partner for peace during the current government's tenure, and no peace process taking place, but rather a genocide. In this regard, we highly value the position of the countries that recognized the State of Palestine based on 1967 borders. The continuation of the humanitarian tragedy of the brotherly Palestinian people for more than seven and a half decades is a shameful stain on the conscience of the international community and its institutions. There is no point in talking about security, peace, and stability in the Middle East region and across the world if not backed by concrete steps leading to an immediate ceasefire and an end to the Israeli occupation of all Arab territories.
Honourable Audience, It is no secret that we are facing a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and other Palestinian territories, which are subjected to coordinated attacks by the occupation army and settlers in an attempt to enforce plans to expand settlements, annex the West Bank, and Judaize Jerusalem. The international community bears responsibility for the consequences of what is happening to the brotherly Palestinian people who are subjected to unfolding genocidal war that has resulted, so far, in the death of more than 41 thousand martyrs, let alone the missing under the rubble, including seventeen thousand children, eleven thousand women and one hundred thousand wounded including thousands of disabled and millions of people who were forcibly displaced several times, in addition to the complete destruction of the infrastructure of hospitals, schools and buildings including mosques and churches. A whole society is being destroyed in the course of the genocide against segments of the Palestinian people. It is the Gazan Palestinian community that has retained its composure and achieved remarkable development levels amid a more than 17-year old stifling siege.
Mr President, The State of Qatar has opted to undertake mediation efforts in an endeavour to stop the aggression on Gaza and secure the release of prisoners and detainees. It is a mediation amidst fierce war and complex circumstances, during which one party would not hesitate to assassinate counterpart political leaders with whom it negotiates, such as the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, who many people feign forgetfulness that he was not only the political leader of Hamas but also the first elected Palestinian prime minister.
For us, mediation and humanitarian work are both a strategic political choice at the regional and international levels and a humanitarian duty before being a political one. And we are not boastful of that vis-a-vis others. Our mediation efforts, in partnership with the Arab Republic of Egypt and the United States of America, culminated in a humanitarian agreement last November. It resulted in a brief ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, the release of 240 Palestinian prisoners and 109 of detainees in Gaza, and increased the flow of relief shipments.
We also provided humanitarian support to the civilian population in the Gaza Strip, contributed to evacuating the wounded and sick, supported humanitarian initiatives to deliver aid through all accessible routes, and increased our support to UNRWA, an irreplaceable international agency whose services are indispensable and which has been subjected to defamation for political purposes related to the Israeli government's desire to eliminate the refugee crisis without resolving Palestine cause.
The State of Qatar will spare no effort to provide various forms of humanitarian assistance to the brotherly Palestinian people until this crisis is resolved. Despite the daunting challenges, obstruction attempts, and the aspersions we are subjected to, we will continue our effort of mediation to resolve the disputes through peaceful means, as we are cognizant that any dispute will never lack a force interested in its continuation while being sceptical of any mediation regardless of the intentions. We will continue to exert efforts with our partners until reaching a permanent ceasefire, securing the release of prisoners and detainees, taking the path of a just solution in accordance with the resolutions of the international legitimacy and the Arab Peace Initiative, and enabling the Palestinian people to obtain all their legitimate rights, foremost of which is their independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the 1967 borders. The establishment of an independent Palestinian state within a just and permanent solution is in the interest of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. We will not achieve this goal except with a serious partner who is aware of the importance of renouncing discord and ending the occupation and all forms of aggression so that we can reach together the desired peace in the Middle East.
Mr President, apart from committing a major crime by rigging wireless communication devices and exploding them simultaneously across thousands of people with total disregard for their identity or location, Israel is currently waging a war on Lebanon and no one knows to what extent this war could escalate. This is what we have repeatedly warned against if the brutal war on Gaza doesn’t end. This systematic destructive war must stop, and this is the choice before Israel as its leaders know very well. They know that it will neither bring security and peace to northern Israel nor Lebanon and that the key to security rests on a just peace.
Stop the aggression on Gaza! Stop the war on Lebanon. In brotherly Yemen, we look forward to preserving the 2022 truce and proceeding therefrom towards a comprehensive ceasefire, resolving the crisis, ensuring Yemen's unity and achieving the aspirations of its brotherly people, through negotiations between the Yemeni parties based on the outcomes of the national dialogue, the Gulf initiative and relevant Security Council resolutions.
As regards the crisis in Syria, and since the beginning of the crisis, the position of the State of Qatar has been clear that Qatar is keen on the interests of brotherly Syrian people, hoping that the parties and countries involved in the crisis will be convinced of the necessity for dialogue and understanding to end this crisis in accordance with the Geneva Declaration 1 and Security Council Resolution 2254, in a way that will achieve the aspirations of the Syrian people and preserve Syria's unity, sovereignty and independence. Regarding the Sudanese issue, we call on all Sudanese parties to stop fighting, and we affirm our support for all regional and international efforts to end this crisis in a way that will ensure the unity of state institutions and the sovereignty and stability of Sudan.
In Libya, we support the political trajectory and the implementation of Security Council resolutions, and we urge all parties to recourse to dialogue and overcome differences in order to complete the comprehensive national reconciliation and preserve the progress and gains achieved on the security, political and economic tracks, and unify state institutions. Arab countries cannot achieve security and stability without the existence of firmly established states capable of legislating and enforcing the law, and developing and implementing national policies. No state can firmly be established and stable in the presence of armed factions that are not under its control. These are self-evident and unquestionable matters.
Ladies and gentlemen, the war between Russia and Ukraine has caused great human suffering and left repercussions on Europe and the world. We reiterate our call on all parties to implement the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations and the rules of international law and seek to find a peaceful solution, as the only possible solution. In this context, and based on our firm belief in the principle of peaceful settlement of disputes, we have made a tangible contribution over the past year, as Qatari mediation led to a prisoner swap between the United States and Venezuela, and dozens of Ukrainian children were reunited with their families after being separated by war.
Finally, we affirm that the State of Qatar will spare no effort in working with its international partners and the United Nations to firmly consolidate the pillars of peace, security, sustainable development, human rights and the rule of law at all levels and to address global challenges in order to achieve a better future for all. Thank you, and may the peace, mercy and blessings of God be upon you.