Published on: August 29, 2025 1:35 AM
Pakistan has earnestly urged “those who shield Israel” and prevent the UN Security Council from taking action to restore peace and security in Gaza to seriously re-examine their policies that have resulted in “mass carnage” of the Palestinians in the devastated enclave.
“The occupying power’s apologists must introspect, and objectively assess the consequences of their policies”, Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, permanent representative of Pakistan to the UN, told the 15-member Council on Wednesday. “What else is complicity,” the Pakistani envoy asked. “In fact, impunity has become Israel’s shield – and this Council’s silence, its enabler.”
The Security Council, he added, cannot remain a bystander. “It must act now, with resolve, to fulfill its Charter responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.” In this regard, Ambassador Iftikhar Ahmad, who was speaking in a debate on the situation in the Middle East, recalled that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) recently adopted a resolution urging the Council, with “moral clarity”, to act under Chapter VII (enforcement) to halt the aggression and violations by the Israeli occupation forces.
Highlighting the deliberate destruction of civilian life in Gaza, he pointed out that overwhelming majority of the more than 62,000 people killed, mostly women and children, were civilians. “How can this ever be justified or defended? This cannot be collateral damage. It is mass carnage.”
“The indiscriminate military onslaught continues, because Israel is confronted with no real consequences for its actions,” the Pakistani envoy told delegates.
“The combined effect of (Israel’s) mass killing, displacement, famine, settlements, and destruction of habitable land leaves no ambiguity: this is a campaign of ethnic cleansing in plain sight.”
Pakistan, he said, condemns Israel’s so-called “military operation” and planned full occupation of Gaza City, which is nothing but a blueprint for further humanitarian catastrophe, threatening to displace once more up to one million people.
At the outset, senior UN officials spoke of the catastrophic situation in Gaza, continued violence and settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, and talk of an imminent takeover by Israel of the whole Strip – while underscoring the need to end the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. “Today the world looks on in horror as the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory continues to deteriorate to levels not seen in recent history,” said Ramiz Alakbarov, UN Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.
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