UN General Assembly adopts two resolutions for immediate ceasefire in Gaza and support for UNRWA

The United Nations General Assembly adopted two resolutions calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and an exchange of prisoners, and supporting the mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which Israel is targeting.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel, with American support, has been waging a "genocidal" war on Gaza, resulting in more than 151,000 Palestinian deaths and injuries, most of them children and women, and more than 11,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and the elderly, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.

By a majority of 158 members, with 9 opposed and 13 abstentions, the General Assembly adopted a resolution on Wednesday evening calling for “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza to be respected by all parties,” and reiterating its demand for “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages,” according to the United Nations website.

The General Assembly also calls on the parties to “comply fully with their obligations under international law with respect to persons they detain, including the release of all arbitrarily detained persons and the remains of all deceased persons.”

The resolution also calls for “enabling Palestinian civilians in Gaza to immediately obtain basic services and indispensable humanitarian assistance, rejects any attempt to starve Palestinians, and demands facilitating the entry of aid into Gaza, coordinated by the United Nations.”

Israel has turned Gaza into the world's largest prison, besieging it for the 18th year, and the war of extermination has forced about two million of its citizens, numbering about 2.3 million Palestinians, to flee in tragic conditions with a deliberate severe shortage of food, water and medicine.

In its resolution, the General Assembly stresses “the need for accountability, and reiterates its firm commitment to the vision of a two-State solution.”

Israel continues its massacres in Gaza, ignoring two arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court on November 21 against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Galant, on charges of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in the Strip.

Tel Aviv also defies the UN Security Council resolution to end the war immediately, and the International Court of Justice's orders to take measures to prevent acts of genocide and improve the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.

The General Assembly's vote came as part of the resumption of its tenth emergency special session, entitled "Illegal Israeli actions in occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory."

After the adoption of the two resolutions, the special session was adjourned, and the President of the General Assembly may resume it at the request of a Member State.

For decades, Israel has occupied lands in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, and rejects the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, on the borders before the 1967 war.

Anatolia