South Africa calls int’l community to hold Israeli regime responsible for Palestinian sufferings
South Africa’s Foreign Minister has called on the international community to take necessary measures against the inhumane conditions imposed by Israeli regime on the Palestinians and end their 73 years of sufferings.
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Naledi Pandor, speaking during a conference organized by the UN Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, said: "We are responsible now as member states of the United Nations to take the necessary measures, the same way the United Nations eventually acted concerning the apartheid regime in South Africa."
The minister continued: "In our capacity as representatives of the international community, we must work to stop these ongoing grievances that the Palestinians face under the illegal Israeli occupation, and to ensure holding Israel accountable for the suffering and inhumane conditions that the Palestinians are subjected to for 73 years."
"As South Africans, we find similarities in our past with the Palestinians, and now I remember the funeral of Shireen Abu Akleh and what happened to her coffin. It reminds me of the gravesites that we had to carry out under the persecution of the apartheid soldiers."
Shireen Abu Akleh is a Palestinian journalist who was shot dead by an Israeli sniper as she covered an Israeli raid on a Palestinian refugee camp in the occupied West Bank last month.
Secretary General of Amnesty International, Agnès Callamard, said: "Security concerns cannot in any way justify the apartheid regime practiced by Israel against the Palestinians."
"All repressive regimes always put security as a pretext to justify their policies. The report of Amnesty International shows that the successive Israeli governments have considered the Palestinians as a demographic threat, and have imposed measures to control and reduce their presence," Callamard added in reference to the report published by the international rights group calling Israel an apartheid state.
Participants confirmed that "the accusation of anti-Semitism against human rights organizations will not silence the voice of these organizations until the Palestinian people obtain their rights guaranteed by international law and the United Nations charters."
