Pakistan has banned New Year’s Eve fireworks as an expression of solidarity with Gazans. Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar has announced that because of the shocking situation in Palestine, the Government of Pakistan has completely banned all kinds of events to express solidarity with the oppressed Palestinians.
He also urged the public to show solidarity with the oppressed people of Gaza, observe simplicity, and exhibit sobriety and humility at the beginning of the New Year. New Year’s Eve is usually marked in boisterous fashion in Pakistan, with fireworks and aerial gunfire as well as a bank holiday on January 1.
There will be a strict ban by the government on holding any kind of event for the New Year. The entire Pakistani nation and the Muslim world are in a sheer state of anguish over the massacre of innocent children and the genocide of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Crossing all limits of violence and injustice, Israel’s relentless aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza has left much of the territory’s north in ruins, and killed at least 21,320 Palestinians, including women and a large number of innocent children, around 9, 000.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is committing mass atrocities in Gaza, and western policy should be to put maximum pressure on Israel to stop. Many civilians have already died in Gaza and there is much more tragedy to come. The UN is warning of an impending disaster.
Israeli forces pounded central Gaza by land, sea, and air and Palestinian authorities reported dozens more deaths, with the U.N. health agency saying thousands of people were trying to flee the fighting. Israeli planes carried out three strikes in Al Nuseirat in central Gaza, killing seven people and wounding several others, medics said.
The U.N. World Health Organization said its staff had seen tens of thousands of people fleeing heavy strikes in Khan Younis and the Middle Area on foot, on donkeys or in cars. Makeshift shelters were being built along the road, it said.
The United Nations on Thursday said the human rights situation in the occupied West Bank was rapidly deteriorating and urged Israel to end unlawful killings against the Palestinian population.
A report released demanded an immediate end to the use of military weapons and means during law enforcement operations, an end to arbitrary detention and ill-treatment of Palestinians, and the lifting of discriminatory movement restrictions.
The use of military tactics and weapons in law enforcement contexts, the use of unnecessary or disproportionate force, and the enforcement of broad, arbitrary, and discriminatory movement restrictions that affect Palestinians are extremely troubling,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
Pakistan has tried to highlight the plight of the oppressed Palestinian people on various global forums to stop the Israeli bloodshed. It will continue to do so in the future as well.
Similarly, the Government of Pakistan is engaged in talks with Egypt and Jordan for the provision of timely relief to the Palestinians, besides evacuation of the injured from Gaza and their treatment. Pakistan has dispatched two aid packages to Palestine while a third package was being prepared.
On the diplomatic front, where international pressure on Israel has grown, French President Emmanuel Macron told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a call of the need to work towards a durable ceasefire with the help of regional and international partners, the French Presidency said.
The idea that the EU or the US will ever form a consensus to isolate and boycott Israel is deeply unrealistic. However, we pray to Allah Almighty that the New Year might dawn with the message of peace, prosperity, and harmony for Pakistan and the rest of the world.
