YouSaid · the spoken record

Bamya

lines on the record: 33
first: 2018-05-17
most recent: 2023-12-29
sittings or episodes: 3
sources: un-security-council

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“But those killed will not be brought back to life. Those scars will never truly heal. The impact of the Israeli massacres in Gaza will be felt for decades. That is true, of course, for the Palestinian people who bear the wounds on their flesh, but also in our region and across the world. And if hope is not restored and freedom does not prevail, no one can predict the next chapter of this tragedy. But everyone knows it will be worse. As the world welcomes a new year, the massacres in Palestine continue, the injustice continues and the suffering continues. How many Palestinian generations will have to suffer before finally being able to live in freedom, dignity and peace in our ancestral land? We want to stop seeing our Nakba grow and to finally be able to see our children grow.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“The powerlessness of some world Powers is not inevitable. It is self-inflicted. There is an international consensus. There is international law. They were not elaborated against anyone but, for the benefit of all, they need to be implemented. We remain committed to them. But they need to protect our people. We cannot only have obligations and be denied our rights, while the other side claims for itself all rights and no obligations. That is not how international law works. It needs to be implemented, as we are witnessing before our very eyes what a breach of that law leads to. As we approach the new year, 75 years have come and gone, and there is a nation still deprived of its land and of its most fundamental rights — still occupied, oppressed and killed. Our people have outlasted the massacres before. They will outlast them once again.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“We have been down that path for 75 years. Does anybody think it is a good idea to continue down that path? Israel announced several times it had handled the Palestinian question. Netanyahu himself told the world a few weeks ago, here in the United Nations (see A/78/PV.10), that there was nothing to worry about, raising a map where Palestine had altogether disappeared. Does anyone believe that the matter was handled? Does anyone believe that more killing, destruction and denial of rights will put an end to the matter? Recognition of, and respect for, our existence and our rights is the only way towards shared peace and security. That is our goal — shared peace and security. How much injustice can a nation take — how much killing, how much humiliation, how much pain? Our suffering is not inevitable. It is human-made, occupation made.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“By doing so, he has been undermining the security of both the Palestinian people and the Israeli people. His intentions have always been clear to anybody willing to look. He has been one of the main protagonists of the war for Palestinian geography and against Palestinian demography over the past three decades. Netanyahu’s political platform is denying Palestinian existence and rights. His political survival requires a never-ending and ever-spreading war. Netanyahu continues rewriting history 75 years after the Nakba, saying that Palestine was a wasteland, when more than 1 million Palestinians lived in cities and had a cultural life and a political life in that land, in order to justify prolonging the Nakba and attempting to finish the job. We have been down the path of negating existence, killing and destroying so many times before.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“However, the intensity and the violence and repression is something that has not been seen in years.” These three months have been the deadliest the West Bank has witnessed in decades, including for children. But do not worry — instead of putting an end to its crimes, Israel will attack the United Nations for reporting on them. There is a war under way against the Palestinian people, as a whole, against our existence and our homeland, against our identity, our history and our future. A few days ago, Netanyahu expressed his pride to have prevented the independence of the Palestinian State, to have undermined and destroyed the Oslo Peace Accords. He is bragging that he is destroying peace in our region. He is openly bragging that he has been obstructing the chance of peace.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“Bethlehem itself endures its share of pain and suffering, mutilated by a wall and, like all cities and villages of the West Bank, victim of constant attacks by settlers and occupation forces. The reality that the Christians of Palestine are enduring is unbearable. It is the same reality that all Palestinians are enduring, including in the Armenian quarter in occupied East Jerusalem, where they are fighting for their identity and their existence. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, at the occasion of the report, released yesterday, on the West Bank stressed that: “the violations documented in this report repeat the pattern and nature of violations reported in the past, in the context of the long-standing Israeli occupation of the West Bank.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“Israel wants to make sure that life in Gaza is no longer possible, with one aim — what they call “voluntary migration”. What it means is 21,000 people killed — almost half of them children. In addition to the women and children, many innocent men have also been killed. Voluntary migration is a code name for forced displacement. Those are the options for Palestinians — destruction or displacement, death or displacement. In Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, celebrations were cancelled. But in reality, the message delivered and embodied by Jesus was celebrated by standing up and speaking out for the Palestinian people in Gaza, for the oppressed, those who suffer and those who endure — as he would have done.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“The world is discovering human beings who, despite repeated assaults and a decade and a half of blockade, somehow preserved and cultivated hope, built their homes only to see them destroyed, built them once more and saw them destroyed once more, built them yet again and built their lives. Despite loss and suffering from within the ruins, they were able to rise again, only to face death once again. They found a way back to life only to see death and destruction haunting them once more. How long can that continue? That is what Israel is attacking — hope. Its greatest enemy is the fact the Palestinian people have not relinquished hope and still have the ability to resurrect. Israel wants to make sure that Palestinians in Gaza have no homes to return to, that they have no life to return to.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“The world is discovering the true Gaza, while Israel is destroying it. As Israel destroys our universities and schools, the world is discovering we have one of the highest literacy rates. As Israel destroys our historic mosques and churches, the world is discovering that we have religious diversity and a Christian community in Gaza — one that is an integral part of our history, our present and our future. The world is discovering the names of brave Palestinian journalists and doctors as it learns that they were killed. The world is discovering a young Palestinian generation that was able to be creative and to perform and to try to lead a life in impossible circumstances only to face death once again.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“We should all have our humanity recognized and respected. Those who have dared, until now, to find a way or another to justify what is happening in the Gaza Strip, will have to endure shame forever. For those calling on our people not to seek vengeance and not to resort to violence, they must support our efforts to deliver justice. That is the path we have chosen — justice, not vengeance. But so far that path has been obstructed for the Palestinian people, and no one has ever been held accountable for the crimes committed against the Palestinian people. In order for Palestinian survivors to live with the sense that the massacres will not resume, Israeli impunity cannot be allowed to survive this assault. The horrors that this impunity has led to will continue occurring until the impunity is brought to an end.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“We will be asked, nevertheless, despite all that we are enduring and all that we have endured for 75 years, to move on — to count on dead one more time, to count our wounded, our permanently disabled, the people scarred for life, the millions of victims — and move on. We will be asked to be peaceful; we will be asked to be grateful that this horrible chapter — among so many other chapters, even though this one is the worst one we have gone through — is over, until the next one begins. This is the ultimate expression of double standards. The other side is never asked to move on if Israelis are killed. The other side is never asked to be peaceful in such situations. This is the ultimate expression of racism, of dehumanization of our nation. We should all be subject to the same rules and the same expectations.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“How will we get over the mass graves and the inability to bury our loved ones and offer them a dignified burial? How will we get over seeing them in plastic bags? How will we get over 1,000 Palestinian children amputated without anaesthesia? Can you hear their screams? Can you feel their pain? Can you imagine if they were your own children? How can we get over 8,000 Palestinians under the rubble — those who were blessed to die quickly and those who endured a terrible and terrifying death, a slow death under the rubble, while we were unable to save them? How do you get over a genocide?”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“The Security Council has called for the protection of civilians; for immediate, safe, unhindered and expanded humanitarian access; for the delivery of humanitarian assistance throughout the Gaza Strip; and for respect for the laws of war, and it has rejected forced displacement — all of which require an immediate ceasefire, which the Council has been repeatedly prevented from calling for. Israel has reacted with disregard and disdain. Why are they getting away with murder at such an unprecedented scale? It is because they have never been held accountable. That is why they confess to their crimes. That is why they steal our lives, our land, our resources, our money, our past, our present and our future in broad daylight. One day the massacres will stop. But how will we get over it?”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“It openly attempts to bully, intimidate and silence them. In order to try to justify the unjustifiable, Israel invokes a history that condemns them and principles that they breach. They invoke the Holocaust to justify the mass killing of innocent civilians — a shameful use and abuse of the memory of 6 million innocent victims. We honour the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, and all victims, by upholding international law, not justifying its breach; by saving innocent lives, not justifying indiscriminate killing; and by refusing to have different sets of laws applied based on the identity of the perpetrators and the identity of the victims, not promoting supremacy and discrimination.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“What do you say on behalf of a people enduring a genocide, blamed for their own deaths by those killing them and blamed for the oppression that they are subjected to by those occupying them; and on behalf of a people facing an existential threat, while those responsible for that threat insist that it is their survival that is at stake. The killers demand apologies from those criticizing them for their crimes. They demand political, financial and military support from the allies that they humiliate and dismiss. They demand from their victims to be grateful that they have not imposed on them even more death and destruction. And they demand from the world witnessing their crimes to recognize that they are the most moral army in the world. Israel considers that the problem lies with those condemning the crimes, not those committing them.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“This is an assault by atrocities — a full-fledged assault on 2.3 million Palestinians, besieged, bombarded, displaced and starved. For more than 80 days, 2.3 million Palestinians have been fighting for their lives, from dawn until dusk and dusk until dawn, every single day for 80 days. There is undeniable evidence and multiple confessions of the criminal nature of the assault and of its criminal objectives: the destruction of a people to force their displacement. That is why people around the world, States and across the globe and moral voices are expressing outrage and calling for an end to the massacres.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“The killing of Palestinian civilians is not a collateral effect of the war. The Israeli assault relies by design on the mass and indiscriminate killing of civilians. The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is not the consequence of a war. It is a tool employed by Israel to pressure people and force them out. The famine under way is not an undesired outcome of the war. It is starvation as a method of war. The collapse of the health system is not an unforeseen result of a war. It is the result of premeditated attacks against hospitals and medical personnel. The indiscriminate killing, the mass arrests, the filmed humiliation of Palestinians, the enforced disappearances, the abductions and the summary executions are aimed at terrorizing the Palestinian people as a whole.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“In conclusion, despite being deprived for decades of its protections, the Palestinian people still believe in international law and its authority. We call for upholding the rule of law. Our calls should be heeded, not denounced or denied. The exceptionalism accorded to Israel must end. It contradicts the international law- based order, has emboldened Israeli aggression and prolonged the historical justice against the Palestinian people with disastrous consequences. We know where impunity has led. It can be seen in the lives that Palestinians are living today under colonialism and apartheid. It is time for a different path that only accountability can pave.”
2022-06-02 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9052Resumption1 (2022) · source
“Even when we join the International Criminal Court (ICC), seeking justice instead of vengeance, some try to deter the Court instead of deterring the criminals. How is that compatible with calls for accountability? Many look at the situation in Palestine as a critical test for the credibility and impartiality of the ICC — a test it cannot afford to fail. There is no claim more offensive and shameful than stating that prosecuting war crimes and crimes against humanity would hinder peace efforts. How can it be that acting to deter and halt crimes against innocents contradicts the pursuit of peace, while allowing and enabling the perpetration of such crimes is somehow compatible with the pursuit of peace? It cannot be, neither in theory nor in fact.”
2022-06-02 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9052Resumption1 (2022) · source
“How can we call our multilateral system an international law-based order when there are perpetrators of crimes who are never held to account and victims who are always deprived of justice? If any country wants to be recognized as a champion of accountability, it cannot at the same time obstruct accountability for crimes committed against the Palestinian people. Palestine has become the yardstick for the credibility of the calls for justice and accountability. Israeli actions have been condemned repeatedly by the Security Council, the General Assembly, the International Court of Justice, the Human Rights Council, special rapporteurs and human rights treaty bodies, and yet Israel continues to be shielded from the consequences of its own actions.”
2022-06-02 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9052Resumption1 (2022) · source
“Tens of thousands are living under threat of forcible displacement in Masafer Yatta, Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley. And an entire nation continues to endure dispossession and displacement, discrimination and denial of rights. As I address the Council today, no Palestinian is safe. Those who the law was designed to protect are the ones who are the most vulnerable and exposed to the crimes of this illegal occupation. Our civilians, including children, are killed on a daily basis. Women, journalists, health workers and human rights defenders are targets, killed in broad daylight, by perpetrators who believe they have nothing to worry about. When will they finally be proved wrong? Either we stand for accountability, or we stand against it. Selective justice allows for denied justice; it therefore condones and perpetuates injustice.”
2022-06-02 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9052Resumption1 (2022) · source
“in the world today with which the Security Council has spoken about in such quantity and with such critical clarity, but acted with such passivity” (A/75/532, para. 37). The Palestinian people suffer from the most protracted protection crisis and accountability crisis in the world. This situation warrants decisive actions beyond condemnations to end the world’s longest military occupation, which is a cost-free occupation, maintained and sustained by impunity. As I address the Council today, millions of Palestinians are still refugees unable to return to their homes. Millions are living under violent military occupation and colonial rule. Some 2 million have been living under an inhumane blockade in Gaza for the past 15 years.”
2022-06-02 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9052Resumption1 (2022) · source
“There is no rule of law without enforcement of the law, and international law is no exception. Accountability is critical to deterring the commission of crimes and to delivering justice for victims. It aims at replacing fear with hope in the hearts of survivors, and to replace arrogance with fear in the minds of their tormentors. It means ensuring that, instead of having no safe haven for victims, there is no safe haven for perpetrators of crimes. In Palestine, we are well placed to speak of the importance of accountability, as we have endured the consequences of its absence for too long. As the former Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur S. Michael Lynk stated: “There is no other grave international human rights situation ...”
2022-06-02 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9052Resumption1 (2022) · source
“At the outset, we wish to congratulate Albania on its assumption of the presidency of the Security Council and for convening today’s important meeting on accountability and justice. We also join other delegations in thanking the eminent briefers for their efforts and their briefings. At the end of the Second World War, the community of nations determined that it was imperative to establish an international law-based order. It enacted rules, not directed against anyone, but for the benefit of all, so as to advance a more just and peaceful world. But if we call them rules, everyone has to abide by them. They must either be observed, or their breach sanctioned. This is especially true for the gravest crimes — genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression.”
2022-06-02 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9052Resumption1 (2022) · source
“Despite the clarity of the law 4 as reaffirmed in countless United Nations resolutions and by the International Court of Justice, treaty bodies, special procedures, virtually every single body on Earth and every State 4 Palestine remains the most important test of the credibility of international law and of the international system, especially at a time when the laws and system are more at risk than ever. This is a test that the international community cannot afford to fail.”
2018-05-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8262 (2018) · source
“By the number of Israeli leaders and senior military officials who have been held accountable for these actions 4 none. In 70 years, none. No sanctions have even been discussed here, at any point in time, when it comes to Israel. No measures of accountability have ever been undertaken. We are the victims of Israeli colonialism and oppression but we are also the victims of impunity, without which these crimes would have ended a long time ago. Without them, we would have achieved our freedom and fulfilled our inalienable rights and peace would have prevailed in our region. Accountability is the path to peace. There is indeed a bias when it comes to Israel in the United Nations and beyond. It is that bias that is shielding it from accountability.”
2018-05-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8262 (2018) · source
“More than 800,000 Palestinians, the equivalent of 40 per cent of our male population in the occupied territory, have been imprisoned or detained since 1967, including parliamentarians, children, women, journalists, academics and artists. The Israeli representative spoke so proudly of Israeli courts today, and yet those courts are complicit in the commission of these crimes. B'Tselem, explaining its decision to cease cooperating with the military law- enforcement system, including Israeli military courts, stated that there is no longer any point in pursuing justice and defending human rights by working with a system whose real function is measured by its ability to continue to successfully cover up unlawful acts and protect perpetrators. How can we explain that reality?”
2018-05-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8262 (2018) · source
“For Israel to yell "security" or "terrorism" is not sufficient grounds for international law to yield or surrender. Those who shield Israel from accountability for such actions, as well as those who blur the lines between legal actions that can be undertaken by States to ensure security and self-defence and what constitutes a war crime or crime against humanity, embolden Israel in pursuing its crimes. There can be no justification for colonization, forcible displacement, the use ofunlawful force or arbitrary detention, and yet today there are 650,000 Israeli settlers in the Palestinian territory that has been occupied since 1967. Innocent civilians are targeted and killed in indiscriminate attacks.”
2018-05-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8262 (2018) · source
“When it comes to Gaza, all we are asking is that the law be implemented. Let usjust restate the facts. Israeli snipers, implementing orders received from the highest levels of Israel's political and military bodies, have opened fire on people, including children, protesting from the other side of the border, using live ammunition, including ammunition that causes serious and irreversible injury, and often shooting people in the back, head or chest while they stood hundreds of metres away. They have killed 100 people and wounded thousands. Israel has not challenged those facts, and should it do so, we have called for an impartial, independent and transparent investigation. If they are so confident that they are right, let them accept it. Are there laws that we are unaware of that justify such actions?”
2018-05-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8262 (2018) · source
“There can be no doubt that Israel is committing such actions in broad daylight, intentionally and without shame or fear of being held accountable. I say without shame because Israel is now trying to make us responsible for its occupation of our land and the oppression of our people, and it is claiming a right to security for itself, the occupying Power, while denying a right to security and protection for the occupied people. International law is the law for all of us, and it must be applicable to all. All Security Council resolutions are binding and should be upheld. Impunity and double standards undermine international law and, as such, threaten international peace and security. Individual States and United Nations bodies must fulfil their responsibilities by respecting and ensuring respect for international law.”
2018-05-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8262 (2018) · source
“It has joined the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols and declared its commitment to abiding by the International Court of Justice's decisions and opinions. It has joined the International Criminal Court and granted it broad jurisdiction. The occupying Power's intentional direction of attacks at our civilian population; its transfer of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies; its deportation or transfer of the population of the occupied territory within or outside that territory; and its persecution of any identifiable group or collective, including a national group, all constitute war crimes under the Rome Statute and, in certain circumstances, crimes against humanity.”
2018-05-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8262 (2018) · source
“At that time, in 1948, while humankind was enacting that set of rules to preserve lives and rights, the Palestinian people were enduring the Nakba, the dispossession and forced displacement of our nation and denial of our rights that continues to this day. Despite being the victims of double standards that have allowed Israel's impunity to continue and enabled the widespread and systematic crimes against our people to recur, the Palestinian people have continued to place their faith in international law and have reaffirmed time and again their commitment to international law and to peaceful, legal and diplomatic means for achieving their inalienable rights. The State of Palestine has joined international human rights law instruments without reservations.”
2018-05-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8262 (2018) · source
“At the outset, I would like to express our appreciation to the Polish presidency for organizing today's important debate on a critical matter at a critical time, and to thank the briefers for their important contribution. International law governs our international relations. Its rules have been formulated collectively and are binding for all. The major developments of international law have occurred as a reaction to horrific tragedies in an attempt to prevent their recurrence and preserve future generations. After the horrors of the Second World War, including the Holocaust, humankind established the United Nations, adopted the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, formulated the Geneva Conventions and formed its first and still imperfect international criminal courts.”
2018-05-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8262 (2018) · source