Iran Slams Israel’s ‘Institutionalized’ Discrimination against Palestinians

“In fact, Israel is an entity that continues to impose institutionalized discrimination against Palestinians living under its rule and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Israeli forces are killing Palestinians even without posing any threat to Israelis,” Balouji said addressing the UNGA First Committee meeting on Thursday. 

The full text of the statement is as follows:

Mr. Chair,

My delegation rejects the baseless allegations that the representative of the Zionist regime of Israel mentioned about Iran.

In fact, Israel is an entity that continues to impose institutionalized discrimination against Palestinians living under its rule and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Israeli forces are killing Palestinians even without posing any threat to Israelis. Israel failed to ensure accountability and redress for victims of such grave violations of international humanitarian and human rights law and so it is subjecting Palestinians to collective punishment and deepening the humanitarian crisis there. It continues to restrict the freedom of movement of Palestinians in the OPT through checkpoints and roadblocks. Israeli authorities unlawfully detain thousands of Palestinians, holding hundreds in administrative detention. Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees, including children, were committed with impunity. Israel continues to displace Palestinians in as a result of home demolitions. The authorities used a range of measures to target human rights defenders, journalists, and others who criticized Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestine and other neighboring countries.

On human rights, the statistics are speaking for themselves and for instance, just in one year, at the United Nations Human Rights Council, Israel has been the focus of 70% of approximately 50 condemnatory resolutions by the council, 60% of the ten Special Sessions of the council and 100% of the council's five fact-finding missions or inquiries. It is worth mentioning that comparisons between apartheid or Nazi regimes and Israel are increasingly made.

In addition, Israel is a possessor of all types of weapons of mass destruction. Its nuclear capabilities have been acknowledged in different occasions. In 2006, then Israeli Prime Minister appeared to acknowledge that Israel had nuclear weapons. When its prime minister in 2018 threatened Iran with nuclear annihilation, it is another case that should be coped with by the international community for obvious reasons.

Israel has undeclared chemical warfare capabilities, and an offensive biological warfare program although it continues to deny these capabilities while rejecting all international calls to put aside the WMD option and abide by the rules that the responsible states have been recognizing and implementing.

Israel has an operational nuclear weapons capability with the mass production of nuclear warheads. The estimates have counted of Israeli nuclear weapons range as many as 400. Israel is also reported to possess a wide range of different systems, including neutron bombs, tactical nuclear weapons, and suitcase nukes. The range of its nuclear weapons delivery mechanisms is estimated up to 11,500 km.

Thus, Israel has no stand to cry wolf on non-proliferation or non-compliance and it must stop lying and accusing other countries, because Israel itself is the number-one violator of international law in the field of human rights, international humanitarian law, and all disarmament instruments. Specially on WMD regimes, it must join the NPT, BWC and CWC and destroy all its WMD arsenals while accepting the related verification regimes. The international community should compel the Israeli regime to put aside any pretext to join the negotiations on establishing a Middle East free of all WMDs under the UN and participate in the discussions and the conference thereof.