Palestine’s UN Ambassador Broke Down While Giving A Speech About Israel’s Occupation At The ICJ
At the end of his speech, Riyad Mansour broke down as he called for a “future where Palestinian children are treated as children, not as a demographic threat”.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, struggled to hold back tears when delivering a speech to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) about Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Six days of hearings are scheduled at the ICJ, the world’s top court, in the Hague in the Netherlands, where 52 countries and three organizations are presenting their arguments on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip since 1967.
The hearing comes after the UN General Assembly passed a resolution in December 2022 to ask the court to issue a legal opinion on the occupation and is separate from South Africa’s case against Israel committing genocide in Gaza since Oct. 7.
Speaking at the end of the first day of the hearing on Monday, Feb. 19, Mansour urged the judges to help end Israel’s unlawful occupation and help secure a two-state solution that will allow the two states of Palestine and Israel to live side-by-side in peace and security.
At the end of his speech, Mansour broke down as he called for a “future where Palestinian children are treated as children, not as a demographic threat”.
Israel is not attending the hearings but sent a five-page written statement published by the court on Monday.
In it, Israel says that a legal advisory opinion would be “harmful” to efforts to resolve the issue as it believes that the questions posed by the UN General Assembly were biased.
The judges are expected to take roughly six months to issue an opinion on the request, which also asks them to consider the legal status of Israel’ occupation and its consequences.
While ICJ advisory opinions are not legally binding like its official rulings, they do carry a lot of authority and weight and comes as Israel faces mounting pressure to end its war on Gaza.
