Safadi calls on UNGA to approve Jordan’s draft resolution on war on Gaza

AMMAN — Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi on Thursday urged the United Nations General Assembly to pass a draft resolution regarding the war on Gaza that Jordan, on behalf of the Arab countries, put forward to achieve peace, and compliance with international law.

At the 10th Emergency Special Session of the UN General Assembly in New York, Safadi said that Jordan, on behalf of the Arab countries, will put forward a draft resolution after the United Nations Security Council did not fulfill its responsibility. He indicated that the draft resolution simply seeks what the United Nations was established to achieve: peace, and compliance with international law.

“My friends, let the passing of the draft resolution be a message to Palestinians suffering the inferno of this Israeli war on them, let it be a message that the international community sees them, feel their pain and believes that Palestinian lives matter too,” Safadi said in his speech at the special session.

Safadi noted that the right to self-defence is not a license to kill with impunity, indicating that collective punishment is not self-defence, but a war crime.

“We must say it as it is. We must refuse the double standards, and selective application of international law. Israel cannot remain above the law,” he emphasised.

Following is the full text of Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi at the 10th Emergency Special Session of the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday:

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

Mr. President, 

Dear friends,

It is at such times of cruelty, inhumanity, and total disregard for international law that we must speak out, clearly, and unequivocally. 

There is no room for grey areas here: 

We must stand for life, for justice, for peace. 

We must stand against this war on Gaza, and the humanitarian catastrophe it is causing. 

We must stand on the side of our human values, and for the Charter of these United Nations. 

History will judge us.

Let us not fail the Palestinian people, a besieged people, 

an occupied people,  

Whose days start with death and end with death. 

Whose nights are engulfed by a total black-out, punctured only by the lightening of Israeli missiles, taking away their lives, shattering their dreams, killing their hope. 

Say no to war. 

Say no to the killing. 

Call out war crimes. 

Defend the right of Palestinian children, women, the elderly to food, to water, to medicine, to fuel, speak out against using starvation as a weapon. 

Children are falling dead under the rubble of homes, destroyed by Israeli precision bombs. 

Some are still alive under the rubble. There is no sufficient equipment to pull them out. Their parents can still hear them, they talk to them helplessly, knowing that they are running out of air, and are slowly dying. Children who may miraculously survive, face dehydration and starvation.  

Israel has killed over 7000 innocent Palestinians since this new vicious cycle of violence and war erupted on October 7. These are people with names, with faces, with memories, and loved ones left behind. Among them 16 health workers, 39 UNRWA staff, 22 journalists. 

Wael Dahdouh, a journalist, had his 8 children separated in 3 different houses so they are not all killed at the same time if it gets bombed. Yesterday, his wife, Amina, 45 years old, his son Mahmud, 16 years old, his daughter, Sham, 7 years old, and his infant grandson, Adam, 45 days old, hear me well, were stolen from him by Israel’s war. They’re not soldiers, and yet, at the going down of the sun, and in the morning. We will remember them.

Israeli government, who has Cabinet members, who openly, shamingly, call for a wiping out Palestinians from the face of this Earth, call them animals, unworthy of life, tells you this is not a war on the Palestinian people. If it is not, then why on Earth did they kill Adam?

عليه، وعليهم، وعلى كل من ارتقى رحمة الله

My friends,

One doctor in Gaza describes how a boy with injuries and facial burns told him how his house was hit after finishing a meal with his parents. His father, sitting next to him, he says, was killed outright. His mother suffocated in the smoke. 

I don’t have videos to show you. We respect the dead too much. We respect the pain of their families too much to show videos. But check out your mobiles. Thousands of videos depicting the abomination, the horror, the inhumanity, to which thousands of Palestinians are being subjected and have been subjected.

Israel is making Gaza a perpetual hell on earth. The trauma will haunt generations to come. 

And Dear friends, 

Do not be fooled. Don’t let them tell you that this is a war between Muslims and Jews.

I stand before you, as a Jordanian, as an Arab, as a Muslim, and I tell you. We value life; Muslim life, Christian life, Jewish life. We value the sanctity of life. 

The Israeli representative did not say a word about Palestinian lives shattered at this war. Yet, the Palestinian one before him, and I do, and I say, we care about all lives, about all civilians. Muslims, Christians, Palestinians, Jews, Israelis. All lives. 

Don’t let them tell you otherwise. This is what an insult to intelligence is.

Dear friends, 

Rage must not blind us to the futility of violence. It must not desensitise us to the pain of fellow human beings. 

We condemn the killing of all civilians, no matter their race, their identity, their nationality, or their religion, because these are our human values, and this is our morality. Israel must uphold these values too. 

How many wars, and how much death, has our region suffered? And what good did that do? All of us? It did not bring security to Israel. It will not. It did not bring security to any of us. 

My friends, 

The right to self-defense is not a license to kill with impunity. 

Collective punishment is not self-defence. 

It is a war crime. 

We must say it as it is. We must refuse the double standards, and selective application of international law. Israel cannot remain above the law. 

Dear friends, 

A just and lasting peace is the best defence for all. Let the guns go silent and let the will to live and let live prevail. Let’s restore faith in the peace process as the only path to ending this conflict, once and for all. 

Many among us believe that they are helping Israel by supporting its war. They are not. Instead of sending weapons to Israel, send delegations to open an immediate and viable path to peace. 

This is how they help Israel. 

And many among us, too, feel that they are doing their ethical and legal duty towards Palestinians by urging humanitarian supplies be sent to them, and not urging an end of this war. 

They are not doing their duty towards Palestinians. 

The responsibility towards Palestinians demands they work for their protection, for peace.

Peace that will ensure a viable, independent, sovereign Palestinian State, with occupied Jerusalem as its capital, on June 4, 1967, lines, living side by side a secure Israel. 

So that Palestinians live free from occupation and its indignity, 

So that no Palestinian or Israeli mother has to once again mourn her child. 

Ladies and gentlemen, 

Jordan, on behalf of the Arab countries, will put forward a draft resolution. We do so after the UNSC did not fulfill its responsibility. The draft resolution simply seeks what our United Nations was established to achieve: Peace, and compliance with international law. 

We all know Israel will ignore it. It did ignore many many many UN resolutions before. And yet, 

Vote for it, Vote for it. Make a stand. 

Ladies and gentlemen, 

A month ago, His Majesty King Abdullah the II stood before this very Assembly. His words echoed true then. They are even more relevant now. 

He said, and I quote:

“Our region will continue to suffer until the world helps lift the shadow of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict — the central issue in the Middle East. No architecture for regional security and development can stand over the burning ashes of this conflict. But seven and a half decades on, it still smolders. Where are we going?”

Dear Friends,

Let’s make a collective cry, cry out against more bloodletting. Let’s unite for peace, let’s unite for justice, let us unite for the right of every Palestinian and every Israeli child to live, free from the horrors of war. Free from fear. And looking for a life full of promise and full of opportunity. For the sake of the Palestinian people and for the sake of Israeli people.

Vote yes and contrary to what you just heard, the resolution does recognise the pain and the killing on the Israeli side as well, the resolution does condemn the killing of Palestinian and Israeli civilians. Don’t be fooled.

My friends, Let the passing of the draft resolution be a message to Palestinians suffering the inferno of this Israeli war on them, let it be a message that the international community sees them, feel their pain, and believes that Palestinian lives matter too. 

Make a stand for peace, make a stand for life, make it clear, make it firm, and before I conclude, I too want to call for a moment of silence but not just for one side or the other, I want to call for a moment of silence for all the civilians, for all the innocent who fell and who continue to fall in this ugly abominable war.

Thank you so much.