{"id":308313,"date":"2025-05-20T14:10:19","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T18:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/?post_type=document&p=308313"},"modified":"2025-06-17T14:10:54","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T18:10:54","slug":"letter-from-the-state-of-palestine-on-the-protection-of-the-palestinian-people-a-es-10-1034-s-2025-314","status":"publish","type":"document","link":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/document\/letter-from-the-state-of-palestine-on-the-protection-of-the-palestinian-people-a-es-10-1034-s-2025-314\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter from the State of Palestine on the protection of the Palestinian people (A\/ES-10\/1034-S\/2025\/314)"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

20 May 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
General Assembly<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/td>\nSecurity Council<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Tenth emergency special session<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/td>\nEightieth year<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Agenda item 5<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Illegal Israeli actions in Occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

 <\/p>\n

Identical letters dated 20 May 2025 from the Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General, the President of the General Assembly and the President of the Security Council<\/strong><\/p>\n

As the Security Council and international community as a whole gather to mark \u201cProtection of Civilians Week\u201d, we once again urgently call for international protection of the Palestinian people.<\/p>\n

As States seize this occasion to reaffirm lofty humanitarian principles and respect for international humanitarian law and obligations to protect civilians in situations of armed conflict, we make this urgent appeal: do not forget the Palestinian people.<\/p>\n

It is indisputable that Israel, as the occupying Power, has totally abdicated its responsibilities to ensure the protection and well-being of the Palestinian civilian population under its military occupation. Instead, it is the direct source of their suffering and insecurity as it persists with its persecution and genocidal onslaught against them, in grave breach of international humanitarian legal obligations and all other tenets of international law and of human morality.<\/p>\n

Neither the Security Council, nor the international community, can honestly proclaim that they are upholding international humanitarian law and doing all that can be done to protect civilians in armed conflict while this genocidal Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people and illegal colonial apartheid occupation continue unabated.<\/p>\n

Innocent children, women and men are being killed, wounded and maimed every single day in Occupied Palestine. They are being orphaned and widowed by the thousands. They are being hunted down by an occupier hell-bent on forcing them from their homes and lands. They are being forcibly disappeared, tormented and tortured in the occupation\u2019s jails. Humanitarian workers, medical personnel and journalists have likewise not been spared such horrific fates.<\/p>\n

As the world has seen and well knows, the impact of Israel\u2019s war crimes and crimes against humanity has been beyond catastrophic in Gaza. Day after day, hundreds of casualties are being caused by the Israeli occupying forces, whether by lethal weaponry or by a lethal siege inflicting starvation, disease and want on more than 2 million children, women and men. Life in Gaza is being annihilated by Israel.<\/p>\n

Palestinian families are being left without the basics for survival: babies left without milk; children left without food, malnourished and wasting away; desperate, exhausted mothers and fathers left to forage for food from charity kitchens still operating on whatever meagre provisions remain; the sick and wounded left without medical care, with hospitals attacked incessantly; an entire population left without their minimal water, sanitation and hygiene needs being met; homes, refugee camps and infrastructure left in ruins, with millions of displaced forced to uproot and flee over again. The most vulnerable are being left without any protection whatsoever.<\/p>\n

With no protection and no end in sight to this depraved Israeli war on our people, the death toll is soaring and will only continue to rise as Israel has resumed ground operations in Gaza in addition to incessant aerial attacks. Though not definitively known, as thousands of bodies remain unrecovered and hundreds of deaths remain unrecorded, the death toll has surpassed 53,573 Palestinians.<\/p>\n

More than 200 people were killed in Israeli attacks in just 48 hours last week, in a tragic irony coinciding with the Palestinian people\u2019s observance of the onset of the Nakba, adding to the list of gruesome massacres of Palestinians committed by Israel and Zionist settler militias since 1948. More than 3,200 people have been killed since 18 March alone, since Israel deliberately broke the ceasefire.<\/p>\n

The victims continue overwhelmingly to be women and children. They too comprise the majority of persons injured \u2013 now over 120,000 people \u2013 many of whom are critically wounded, many disabled for life and many of whom will die of their wounds and infections as Israel continues deliberately depriving our people of medical care, again in grave breach of international humanitarian law and any measure of human decency.<\/p>\n

All of this continues in spite of the clear prohibitions by international law; Security Council resolutions, including resolutions 2735 (2024)<\/a><\/em>, 2728 (2024)<\/a><\/em>, 2720 (2023)<\/a><\/em> and 2712 (2023)<\/a><\/em> and its many resolutions on the protection of civilians, including children, and humanitarian personnel; the provisional measures orders of the International Court of Justice of January, March and May 2024; the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice of 19 July 2024 on the illegality of Israel\u2019s occupation; and countless General Assembly and Human Rights Council resolutions.<\/p>\n

And all of this continues in spite of the endless pleas of Palestine, the Secretary-General, leaders of United Nations agencies and programmes, Special Rapporteurs and independent human rights experts, international humanitarian and human rights organizations, many governments and citizenry across the world.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s contempt of international law and disrespect for the international community \u2013 for all States, including its own allies \u2013 have reached an unprecedented level of brazenness requiring immediate and bold political and humanitarian intervention to save the millions of lives imperilled by its genocidal ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinian people, a campaign in which it has long sought to make the world complicit.<\/p>\n

An immediate ceasefire must be imposed in Gaza and the rest of Occupied Palestine, including East Jerusalem, and the Israeli blockade on Gaza must be broken, enabling life-saving aid to rapidly reach our people to stave off famine and disease, treat the sick and wounded and shelter the millions of displaced, an essential form of protection for the Palestinian people. United Nations agencies, including the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵRWA), must be allowed to carry out their humanitarian mandates unimpeded. Schemes attempting to circumvent or undermine United Nations mandates and capacities already in place, and that violate the humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality, must be firmly rejected.<\/p>\n

We thus call again on the Security Council to act now. The Council must break its silence and shoulder its responsibilities under the Charter of the United Nations, using all the tools at its disposal, to halt the atrocities and this threat to international peace and security. In the face of this ongoing Israeli aggression and continued failure of the Council to implement its own resolutions, we persist with our calls on all States to act without delay to uphold their legal, humanitarian, political and moral obligations to confront this monumental crisis.<\/p>\n

International action \u2013 individually and collectively by States \u2013 must aim at stopping Israel\u2019s crimes, and this must include action for accountability as a tangible deterrent for the Israeli impunity we have witnessed for decades and most horrifically for over 19 months.<\/p>\n

There must be consequences for Israel\u2019s rogue behaviour. Concrete measures \u2013 including arms embargo, sanctions and diplomatic downgrades \u2013 must be enacted now in accordance with international legal obligations. We recall General Assembly resolution ES-10\/24<\/a><\/em>, adopted following the rendering of the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on 19 July 2024, and the obligations to act reaffirmed therein, and call for immediate implementation of its provisions.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s leaders \u2013 from the Prime Minister on down \u2013 have made abundantly clear through their inflammatory rhetoric, violent incitement and boastful intransigence that they have no intention of stopping their crimes. It is equally clear that, without a cost for such impunity, they will remain undeterred. The international community must act.<\/p>\n

In this regard, we recognize recent statements and decisions by several governments in response to Israel\u2019s refusal to cease fire and to respect international law. We call for the implementation of such important decisions and for further actions by the Security Council and by all States towards upholding legal obligations in the face of Israel\u2019s abhorrent crimes and defiance. This must include genuine efforts to protect the Palestinian people, including by demanding an immediate ceasefire and ensuring unimpeded humanitarian access, as the international community recommits this week to the protection of civilians in armed conflicts no matter where they may be, including in Gaza.<\/p>\n

The present letter is in follow-up to our 867 letters on the ongoing crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, which constitutes the territory of the State of Palestine. These letters, dated from 29 September 2000 (A\/55\/432-S\/2000\/921<\/a><\/em>) to 8 May 2025 (A\/ES-10\/1033-S\/2025\/297<\/a><\/em>) constitute a basic record of the crimes being committed by Israel, the occupying Power, against the Palestinian people since September 2000. For all of these war crimes, acts of State terrorism and systematic human rights violations against our people, Israel, the occupying Power, must be held accountable and the perpetrators must be brought to justice. This illegal colonial occupation and apartheid regime must end now.<\/p>\n

I should be grateful if you would arrange to have the present letter distributed as a document of the tenth emergency special session of the General Assembly, under agenda item 5, and of the Security Council.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Signed<\/em>) Riyad Mansour<\/strong><\/p>\n

Minister<\/p>\n

Permanent Observer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  20 May 2025 General Assembly Security Council Tenth emergency special session Eightieth year Agenda item 5 Illegal Israeli actions in Occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory   Identical letters dated 20 May 2025 from the Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations addressed to the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"country":[1593],"document-category":[2841],"document-source":[],"committee-meeting":[],"document-subject":[1769,1945,2005,1741,1745],"entity":[1729],"document-language":[6544,6543,6542,6541,6539,6538],"class_list":["post-308313","document","type-document","status-publish","hentry","country-palestine-state-of","document-category-letter","document-subject-armed-conflict","document-subject-assistance","document-subject-gaza-strip","document-subject-human-rights-and-international-humanitarian-law","document-subject-refugees-and-displaced-persons","entity-united-nations-system","document-language-arabic","document-language-chinese","document-language-english","document-language-french","document-language-russian","document-language-spanish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/308313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/document"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/308313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308319,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/308313\/revisions\/308319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=308313"},{"taxonomy":"document-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-category?post=308313"},{"taxonomy":"document-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-source?post=308313"},{"taxonomy":"committee-meeting","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/committee-meeting?post=308313"},{"taxonomy":"document-subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-subject?post=308313"},{"taxonomy":"entity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entity?post=308313"},{"taxonomy":"document-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-language?post=308313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}