The barbarity unleased by Israeli forces on innocent, unarmed Palestinian citizens in Gaza should be enough to jolt the international community from its criminal silence on the slaughter of Palestinians. Last December, US President Donald Trump announced the embassy’s move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, delivering on his election campaign promise. The decision broke with long-standing US foreign policy and has been widely criticized. The international consensus remains that the status of Jerusalem should be part of final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. As the ceremony to inaugurate the United States’ controversial embassy in Jerusalem began on Monday amid much fanfare in Israel, a few kilometers away Israeli forces killed at least 60 protesters and wounded more than 2,700.
Throughout the past seven weeks, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been protesting as part of a weeks-long movement calling for the right of return for Palestinian refugees to the homes and villages they were forcibly expelled from by Zionist militias in 1948. Since the protests began on March 30, Israeli forces have killed at least 111 Palestinians in the coastal enclave and wounded about 12,000 people.
The slaughter of innocent Palestinians has drawn widespread international condemnation but it remains to be seen whether anything concrete would be done to stop Israel from its atrocities. Turkey has called for an emergency meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Turkey also recalled its ambassadors to Israel and the United States in protest. South Africa has also recalled its ambassador to Israel. Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations Maleeha Lodhi has called for an independent inquiry into Israeli “state terrorism” in Gaza. Earlier, Pakistan strongly condemned the merciless killings and injuries to innocent unarmed Palestinian civilian protesters by the occupying Israeli authorities. Islamabad said that the protests are a consequence of the relocation of the United States Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in opposition to the position of the United Nations and under international law.
Pakistan also renewed its call for the establishment of a viable, independent and the contiguous State of Palestine, on the basis of internationally agreed parameters, the pre-1967 borders, and with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital. Although a number of Muslim and non-Muslim countries have raised voice for Palestinians and condemned Israeli brutalities but more needs to be done to force Israel into stopping its killing spree.