CAIRO: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Thursday that the United Nations has failed to resolve international conflicts and harshly criticized Israeli actions in Gaza.
“Israel’s behavior has no explanation: with the pretext of fighting Hamas, it is killing women and children,” he said after a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.
Speaking later to the Arab League, Lula said Brazil had condemned the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, but he added that the Israel’s response was “disproportional and indiscriminate” and unacceptable.
Lula said there would not be peace without the establishment of a Palestinian state and called for an immediate ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.
“The killing must be stopped,” he said.
The Brazilian leader said Palestine should be recognized as a sovereign state and admitted to the United Nations as a full member, and he called for reform of the UN Security Council.
“The multilateral institutions that were created to help solve these problems do not work, which is why Brazil is committed to making the necessary changes in global governance bodies, and we hope to count on Egypt’s support,” he said to reporters alongside El-Sisi.
Lula said the permanent Security Council should be expanded and its veto powers abolished. “It is the permanent members of the Security Council that foment wars,” he said.
Brazil has supported South Africa’s case brought before the International Court of Justice against the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, he added.
The leftist president, who’s on his third non-consecutive term, also announced his government will make a new contribution to the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), which is
facing a cash crunch
after Israel alleged that 12 of its 13,000 staff in Gaza were involved in the Oct. 7 attack.
“The recent allegations against the agency’s staff need to be properly investigated, but they cannot paralyze it,” he said, calling other countries “to maintain and increase their contributions.”
Brazil’s Lula slams Israel on Gaza war, says UN failed
https://arab.news/6buyu
Brazil’s Lula slams Israel on Gaza war, says UN failed
- Speaking later to the Arab League, Lula said Israel’s response was “disproportional and indiscriminate” and unacceptable
- There would not be peace without the establishment of a Palestinian state
Palestinian NGO condemns Israeli act of ‘revenge’ after prisoner abuse video
- A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military priso
RAMALLAH: A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison.
Just days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Ben Gvir held a tour of Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Channel 7 reported.
In footage filmed on Friday and broadcast by the channel, around 20 police officers are seen storming a hallway leading to prison cells, brandishing their weapons and firing stun grenades.
They then pull five detainees from their cells, their hands tied behind their backs, forcing them face-down onto the floor.
The operation took place as a bill proposing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism awaited a final vote in the Israeli parliament.
“This is all part of ongoing displays meant to take revenge on Palestinian detainees,” Abdallah al?Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, told AFP on Saturday.
“Everything Ben Gvir and the far?right government are doing affects not only the Palestinian people and prisoners in detention camps — it also impacts the global legal and human rights system,” he added.
Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, is considered one of the most hard-line members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
“It is simply a source of pride — arriving at a prison like this, a prison for terrorists, the vilest of the vile, seeing them like this,” Ben Gvir said in the video.
“I want one more thing: to execute them — the death penalty for terrorists,” he added.
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Saturday said the remarks were “a new war crime and a blatant challenge to international humanitarian law regarding prisoners.”
International rights groups have repeatedly warned of alleged abuse and mistreatment inflicted in Israeli prisons since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
While the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, it has become a de facto abolitionist country, with the Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann the last person to be executed in 1962.
