UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has warned Israeli leaders to realise that “a continued conflict in the occupied territories with the Palestinians will eventually erode the very nature of their state, and the war within will not remain unconnected with the wars raging just across Israel’s imposed frontiers”.

Taking part in a debate on the situation in the Middle East including the Palestinian question in the Security Council, Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi said, “The plight of the Palestinian people is one of the core causes of the rise and spread of popular anger and alienation across the Arab and Muslim world.

“Extremist ideologies and violent groups in the Middle East will be difficult to defeat until the essence of their narrative — the injustices against Mus­lim peoples, especially the Palestinians — is justly and effectively addressed.”

Maleeha Lodhi links plight of Palestinians to anger across Muslim world

She said recent events had reinforced the conclusion that there would be no peace or stability in the holy land unless Israel accommodated an independent, contiguous and viable Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 borders and with Al Quds Al-Sharif as its capital.

“Unfortunately,” Ms Lodhi said, “Israel has adopted a totally inflexible policy, including the continued takeover of more and more Palestinian land for Israeli settlements. This is increasingly rendering a two-state solution more and more difficult to achieve. We share the secretary general’s profound concern at reports of Israel’s authorisation of the largest land grab in over a year.”

Ms Lodhi said, “The fires that have ignited across the region in recent years — in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and beyond — cannot eclipse the Palestine question, nor render a solution for its enduring tragedy less urgent or essential.”

During a half century of occupation Palestine was repeatedly promised statehood. “But as we know these promises never materialised and set the stage for its prolonged tragedy. The political injustices and human suffering of the Palestinian people have progressively intensified.”

She said: “The Security Council must mobilise the political will to implement its own binding resolutions requiring Israel’s withdrawal from occupied Palestinian and Arab territories and fulfillment of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, including their right to a sovereign and secure Palestinian state.

“ISIS has emerged as a rogue threat to the entire region and to the world. It must be confronted and defeated. To succeed in this, the states of the region, with the international community’s assistance, must reach the political decisions to end the civil war and suffering in Syria and build a path to peace responsive to the aspirations of all its people; achieve an inclusive structure for governance where there is a need to accommodate the rights and interests of all religious and ethnic groups; halt the fighting in Yemen and rebuild this impoverished and broken country.”

Published in Dawn, January 28th, 2016