DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Faisal al-Miqdad has criticized the UN Security over its inaction to maintain international peace and security, saying its failure is encouraging the Zionist regime to continue its aggression and crimes against the Palestinians.
Miqdad, in a message addressed to the UN General Assembly read out by Syria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Bassam Sabbagh, said the new war on the besieged Gaza Strip and its repeated assaults across the occupied West Bank, including al-Quds, are in line with the regime’s continuous acts of aggression in the region, including against Syria and Lebanon, and its support for terrorist groups.
Palestinians, he said, have been experiencing forced displacement, demographic change and expropriation of their territories, blockade as well as gross violation of their rights over the past seven decades, making their issue a lingering human tragedy unparalleled in modern history.
Iraq’s permanent representative to the United Nations also called on the international community to stand up to the Zionist regime and its settlement expansion policies.
“Iraq condemns the Zionist regime’s aggression against Palestinian people, and considers it as a flagrant violation of human rights, international conventions, UN Security Council resolutions and an obstacle to peace process in the region,” Mohammad Hussein Bahr al-Uloom said at the UN General Assembly.
“Assaults on al-Aqsa Mosque, prevention of worshipers from entering the site to perform religious rites, attacks on innocent civilians followed by brutal and vicious raids on the occupied city of al-Quds, Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and the Gaza Strip, destruction of critical infrastructure and housing complexes as well as forced displacement of people from their homes attest to the Tel Aviv regime’s expansionist policies and show it does not seek a peaceful and stable solution in the region.”
However, there are reports that over the past two weeks, Egypt’s official response to the escalation of deadly violence in Zionist-Palestine has sharply contrasted with its crackdown on support for the Palestinian cause at home.
In contrast to this official show of support to Gaza and attempts to bring attacks on the Palestinian territory to an end, Egypt does not allow the slightest expression of support for the Palestinians to be made on its streets.
A female journalist recounted on 14 April her painful experience of raising the Palestinian flag in downtown Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square.
Nourelhoda Zaki and a friend of hers raised the flag in support of the Palestinians. As a result, policemen detained Zaki and her friend for hours, verbally harassing and humiliating them before forcing them to drop the flag, leave the square altogether and pledge never to return for another show of support.
“Sorry to say, I believed the grand imam of al-Azhar is asking people around the world to back the Palestinians,” Zaki wrote on her Facebook page, referring to the mosque in Cairo.
Nonetheless, other Egyptians are finding ways to evade this official intolerance to public support to the Palestinians, including on social media where numerous hashtags and support campaigns have gone viral.
The nation’s celebrities have also joined in, including a budding actor who appeared on TV recently wearing a T-shirt on which the word “Palestinian” was written in Arabic.
The ceasefire between the Zionist regime military and Hamas in the Gaza Strip held through its second day, as thousands of displaced Palestinians in the besieged enclave returned to their homes to check for damage after 11 days of relentless Zionist bombardment.
Palestinian officials on Friday said it would cost $100m to rebuild the damage to industry, power and agriculture in the already impoverished territory struggling under a devastating 14-year blockade.