CAIRO: The Egyptian permanent delegate to the United Nations, Ambassador Hisham Badr, emphasized Egypt's rejection for Israel's continued violations in the occupied Palestinian territories, especially East Jerusalem, “violating international law and UN resolutions and not implementing the resolutions of the Special Sessions (no. 9 and 12), of the Security Council on the Israeli war on Gaza.†The Egyptian delegation also criticized Israel for not cooperating with the international commission of inquiry headed by Judge Goldstone, the South African and for their non-implementation of the recommendations contained in his report. Badr also stressed in a speech Monday to the International Council on Human Rights (ICHR) in Geneva the need to discuss the situation in the occupied territories that the international community and the Human Rights Council “must not allow Israel to be above the law and required a serious and immediate stance toward Israeli policies.†He added that Egypt “reiterates its call upon all parties, which was addressed by the report of Goldstone, to proceed with the implementation of various recommendations, and supports the formation of a committee of independent experts in international law to assess and monitor investigations conducted by the Israeli and Palestinian parties in the abuses cited in the report [and] to assess their consistency with international standards.†The permanent representative of Egypt stressed that the credibility of the ICHR is “indivisible and it must not allow any country, including Israel, to ignore its decisions and proceed with the violations, as if nothing had happened.†Badr argued that Egypt has made great efforts to achieve Palestinian reconciliation, and to work for the resumption of negotiations between the Palestinian and Israeli sides from where it ended, “within the framework of a clear reference committed to the resolutions of international legitimacy, according to a specific time frame, in order to achieve a just and comprehensive peace that leads to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state where East Jerusalem would be its capital on all the territories occupied by Israel in 1967.†Badr added that Egypt has repeatedly declared “total rejection of all attempts by Israel's efforts to break up the unity of the Palestinian territories and to change the demographic and geographic reality of the occupied Palestinian territories including East Jerusalem, and repeated attacks on al-Aqsa Mosque and the surrounding region, and Israel's attempts to undermine the solution of two states.†Badr called on the council to assume its responsibilities and called on all countries of the world “to reaffirm the illegality of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and call on Israel to an immediate and full cessation of settlement policy and the implementation of the relevant international resolutions, and blocking the Judaizing attempts of Jerusalem.†He stressed that the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron and the Bilal Ben Rabah Mosque in Bethlehem are “an integral part of Palestinian land. “ The ICHR must apply “the Fourth Geneva Convention and then the occupation authorities cannot include them and the attack on East Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa Mosque is an attack on holy sites of the entire Islamic world.†BM
