UNGA to Convene Emergency Session to Address ‘Grave Situation’ in Occupied Palestinian Territory

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) is set to hold its tenth emergency special session on 26 October at the UN headquarters in New York, UNGA President Dennis Francis has confirmed.

Jordan and Mauritania, acting as Chair of the Arab Group and Chair of the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (OIC), respectively, along with Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao, Malaysia, the Maldives, Timor-Leste, Viet Nam, and Brunei Darussalam have requested the resumption of the tenth emergency special session of the UNGA as rapidly as possible, Francis said in his letter addressed to all permanent representative and permanent observers to the UN.

This request comes in response to the United States’ veto on 18 October of a draft resolution addressing the dire situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. The United States stood alone in opposing the resolution, with 12 members voting in favour, while Russia and the United Kingdom abstained.

Meanwhile, Abdulla Shahid, the Maldives’ Minister of Foreign Affairs, condemned the ongoing Israeli military attacks on innocent Palestinian civilians and children in a social media post on Monday. “We [the Maldives] stand with the people of Palestine and their legitimate pursuit to attain their inalienable rights, including the right to self-determination,” wrote Shahid.

Shahid also noted that the Maldives and other nations were urging the UNGA President to resume the General Assembly Special Session under the ‘Uniting for Peace’ resolution.

The tenth Emergency Special Session of the General Assembly first convened in April 1997, following a request from Qatar’s Permanent Representative. This was in response to Israel’s decision to build Har Homa, a 6,500-unit housing project, in East Jerusalem’s Jabal Abu Ghneim area. The session last resumed on 13 June 2018 to consider a draft resolution titled “Protection of the Palestinian civilian population.”

Since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, Israeli forces have killed over 5,791 Palestinians and wounded more than 15,000. The majority of casualties are women and children. The death toll and number of wounded are rising exponentially daily. Entire generations of families have been wiped out in what many observers call “a clear act of genocide and war crimes against the Palestinian people, carried out by Israel’s oppressive apartheid regime.”