NEW YORK (Dispatches) – A majority of 125 countries in the UN General Assembly have backed an unprecedented open-ended war crimes probe against the Zionist regime, news agencies reported.
The probe was initially approved in May by UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in the aftermath of the Zionist aggression on Gaza that took place in May 2021. The attack lasted for 11 consecutive days, and left at least 260 Palestinians killed, including 66 children.
The UNGA vote came after the occupying regime asked to amend the UNHRC budget resolution so that the money for the probe be excluded from the overall UNHRC budget.
Only 8 members voted in favor of the resolution, including the Zionist regime and the U.S., while 34 countries abstained.
Palestine’s Permanent Ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, commended the vote and all the countries that rejected the regime’s proposal.
He thanked the UNGA for approving all budgets of the programs relating to the Palestinian cause, including his request to increase funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Meanwhile, UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Michael Lynk, said on Thursday that the international community must hold the occupying regime accountable for its occupation of Palestine.
His remarks came in a statement he issued to mark the fifth year since the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for an end to all settlement activities in the Palestinian territories.
“On the fifth anniversary of the adoption of Resolution 2334 by the United Nations Security Council, the international community has to take its own words and its own laws seriously,” he said.
He added, “Without decisive international intervention to impose accountability upon an unaccountable occupation, there is no hope that the Palestinian right to self-determination and an end to the conflict will be realized anytime in the foreseeable future.”
The occupying regime’s siege on the Gaza Strip since 2007 has inflicted severe hardship on residents. The poverty rate among Gaza’s population has reached 53 percent, while “extreme poverty” stands at 33.8 percent, according to statistics by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
About 68 percent of families do not have enough to eat, while 80 percent of Gazans are dependent on aid, and the area’s unemployment rate stands at 45.1 percent, according to PCBS.