The UN Human Rights Council on Friday demanded a halt in all arms sales to Israel, highlighting warnings of “genocide” in its war in Gaza, which has killed more than 33,000 people.
The resolution -- which passed with 28 of the council’s 47 member states, including Bangladesh, voting in favour, six, including the US and Germany, opposed and 13, including India and France, abstaining -- marked the first time the United Nations’ top rights body has taken a position on the bloodiest-ever war in the besieged Palestinian territory.
Meirav Eilon Shahar, Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, denounced the resolution as “a stain for the Human Rights Council and for the UN as a whole”.
The strongly worded text called on countries to “cease the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to Israel... to prevent further violations of international humanitarian law and violations and abuses of human rights”.
It noted that the International Court of Justice ruled in January “that there is a plausible risk of genocide” in Gaza.
Friday’s resolution, which was brought forward by Pakistan on behalf of all Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member states except Albania, also called for “an immediate ceasefire” and “for immediate emergency humanitarian access and assistance”.
‘Stop this genocide’
“We need you all to wake up and stop this genocide, a genocide televised around the world,” Palestinian ambassador Ibrahim Mohammad Khraishi told the council before the vote.
South African ambassador Mxolisi Nkosi also said it was time for the council to act, lamenting that “our silence has been truly deafening”.
“We can no longer choose to apply a parallel system of international law to Israel, nor can we be complicit in facilitating its actions,” he said.
The United States, Israel’s key ally, heeded its call to vote no, as did Germany, Argentina, Bulgaria, Malawi and Paraguay.
The war in Gaza war began after Hamas’s 7 October attack, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 people in Israel, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Hamas also took more than 250 hostages on 7 October, and 130 remain in Gaza, including 34 who the army says are dead.
Since then, Israel’s relentless military attack has killed at least 33,091 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.-AFP
