Statement by Jordan before the General Assembly 64th Session

Agenda Item 64: “Report of the Human Rights Council”

New York

4 November 2009

[ET: 01:21:55-01:28:59 - Jordan]
JORDAN REPRESENTATIVE:  Mr. President, I wish first to thank you sir for your diligent response to convene this important meeting in order to discuss the report of the United Nations fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict, the Goldstone report.
Mr. President, the report of Judge Goldstone before us today is yet another evidence of the failure of military solutions of conflict in Palestine and the Middle East.  My country time and again emphasized the failure and un-sustainability of the Israeli military approach in dealing with the question of Palestine.
From this podium, we wish to reiterate emphasizing that the future of the Israeli state and its existence in the region and its enjoyment of peace and stability cannot all be attained except through the peace approach and the resumption of serious peace negotiations on all tracks and the return of occupied Arab territories since 1967.
The work of the fact-finding mission has been performed within the mandate entrusted to the mission by the Human Rights Council.  The work of the mission was characterized by professionalism that reflected the integrity of impartiality of its members.  The Goldstone report is yet another addition to other international reports chronicling the conflict and destruction in the Middle East.  In general, all of them condemned the Israeli military operations against civilians and population areas and houses of worship and other targets permitted under international humanitarian law, especially the Geneva Conventions regarding the protection of civilians in times of war.
Furthermore, actions by Israel, as outlined by the Goldstone report during the recent war against Gaza, represents a legal and moral violation of its responsibility by virtue of the fact that it is an occupying power under international humanitarian law.  Here we would like to set on record our profound sorrow for the lack of cooperation on the part of the Israeli government with the international fact-finding mission, and we demand that Israel should comply with the will of the international community to investigate the number of victims who lost their lives and the massive destruction caused by the Israeli military operations in Gaza, which included United Nations relief organs, including the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, UNRWA.   
Mr. President, my country and all other peoples in the region suffered the scourges of conflict and occupation.  Through the too many years of conflict, it has been proven that violence and killing would lead only to more violence and deepen the sense of frustration and despair among all peoples of the region.  Time has indeed come for the international community to achieve criminal justice and protect the future generations from recurrence of human tragedies which we have seen in Gaza, and before that all the conflicts in the context of one of the longest-running conflicts in modern human history.
And therefore, Mr. President, this organization has a grave responsibility in terms of ensuring that the efforts of Judge Goldstone and his colleagues would not be moth-balled.  It is imperative, therefore, that the recommendations of the report should be pursued in order to ensure maintenance of international peace and security.  In this regard, it is the duty of the Security Council by virtue of the responsibilities entrusted to it in order to consider the findings and recommendations contained in the Goldstone report.
We in Jordan, Mr. President, it has been our long-standing, firm policy to respect international humanitarian law and human rights.  Jordan has worked tirelessly in order to establish the international criminal court in order to preserve the interests of humankind and to establish a bulwark against impunity.  Here redressing the culture of impunity is a collective responsibility of all member states of the United Nations and criminal responsibility cannot in any way be in contravention with the peace efforts.
Mr. President, we demand Israel, with whom my country has a peace treaty, to rest its case on peace and peaceful coexistence with the peoples in the region and to seize from all practices contravening international law, namely settlement activities, excavations, displacement of the Palestinian population, demolition of houses in Jerusalem, constant siege of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, partition and swallowing up of Palestinian land by building the partition wall.
Here we would like to caution that Israeli practices in Jerusalem will touch off yet another spiral of violence and be a severe setback to peace efforts, given the peculiar religious and historical status of Jerusalem to both Muslim and Christian peoples.
We would like to stress that these Israeli practices in Jerusalem and other occupied Arab territories cannot be reconciled with a peace approach and serve not the future and security of Israel and the region.  I thank you sir.