Palestinians mark 40th International Solidarity Day

Palestinian officials have urged the international community to mark the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People by implementing the United Nations resolutions that demand an end to the Israeli occupation, as well as to voice their support for the Palestinian struggle for nationhood.

The day, which the General Assembly has marked since 1978, falls on November 29, the same day that the UN adopted Resolution 181, the Partition Plan for Palestine, in 1947.

“The international community cannot continue to decry the violation of Palestinian rights and destruction of the two-state solution without acting to end this unlawful situation,” Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, said on Thursday.

“The huge gap between our lofty convictions and abhorrent realities on the ground must be quickly remedied before it is too late for Palestinians, for Israelis and for the region as a whole,” he added.

Since being established in 1945, the General Assembly and the Security Council have adopted scores of resolutions pertaining to Israel/Palestine – the vast majority of which have not been implemented by successive Israeli governments.

Israel‘s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, called the resolutions a “mockery”.

“These resolutions make a mockery of the Palestinians, the very people the UN claims to defend,” he said.

“They do not lead the Palestinians forward to the future but keep them locked in the past.”

The Palestinian government, as well as the UN, support a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.

Palestinians accuse Israel of damaging the prospects for establishing a sovereign Palestinian state through its ongoing, illegal construction of Jewish-only settlements in the occupied territories.

In a statement, Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestinian National Council, said the “suffering, dispossession, displacement and victimisation of the Palestinian people began when the state of Israel was established on the land of historical Palestine”.

“Solidarity is not just an abstract expression of empathy,” she said. “Rather, it is an active, positive and concrete engagement.”

Yousef al-Mahmoud, the Palestinian government spokesperson, said the international community should be held responsible for allowing Israel’s decades-long occupation to continue.

“International silence on the occupation and its crimes only encourages Israel to continue violating international resolutions and laws,” Mahmoud said.