At UN, Pakistan calls for an end to Israeli strikes on Gaza

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s permanent representative to the United Nations (UN), Ambassador Munir Akram, on Friday called for an end to Israeli strikes on and the killing of Palestinians in Gaza, Pakistani state media reported, with the envoy reaffirming Islamabad’s support for a two-state solution to the Palestine issue.
The Pakistani envoy made the call while speaking at the 10th emergency session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, the state-run Radio Pakistan broadcaster reported.
He said 37 staff members of the UN Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) in Palestine had lost their lives in Israeli strikes and the world was witnessing a human tragedy of epic proportions unfold in Gaza. 
“The Palestinians are being bombed indiscriminately and without mercy or compunction. Their essential lifelines — water, food, fuel — have been cut off. Over a million have been internally displaced,” Akram was quoted as saying by Radio Pakistan.
“Pakistan strongly and unequivocally condemns Israeli air strikes and the systematic and barbaric crimes against the Palestinians. These Israeli attacks on civilians, civilian objects and infrastructure, blockade of water, food and fuel, as well as the forced transfer of people from the occupied territory, are flagrant violations of international humanitarian law and amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Israeli air strikes destroyed hundreds of buildings in the Gaza Strip overnight, the civil defense service in the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory said on Saturday.
Israel said on Saturday morning its troops, sent in on Friday night, were still in the field, without elaborating. It had earlier made only brief sorties into Gaza during three weeks of bombardment to root out Hamas militants, who it said had killed 1,400 Israelis in Oct. 7 attacks.
The Palestinian death toll in Gaza has soared past 7,300, more than 60 percent of them minors and women, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.
Since the occupation of Palestine by Israel, Pakistan has adopted a consistent policy by refusing to recognize Israel as a state.
The South Asian country calls for a viable, independent, and contiguous Palestinian State, with pre-1967 borders, Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital, and a comprehensive and lasting solution to the Palestinian question in accordance with the relevant United Nations and OIC resolutions.
Ambassador Akram called for reaffirming the right of Palestinian people under international law to “struggle by all possible means, including armed struggle, to secure their freedom from foreign occupation and exercise their right to self-determination.”
In the context of this war, he said, consideration should also be given to some form of an accountability mechanism as crimes were committed could not go unpunished.
The Pakistani envoy stressed the need to consider ways to prevent a recurrence of this “slaughter” and to seriously consider the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) foreign ministers’ proposal of deployment of a protection force to safeguard Palestinian civilians in Gaza and perhaps also in the West Bank.