Staff Reporter
Namibia yesterday again condemned Israel’s continued occupation and discrimination of Palestinians after a pre-dawn Israeli strike killed 13 people, including several children.
During a United Nations meeting yesterday, a Namibian diplomat based in Austria, Jerry Mika, demanded that Israel cease its apartheid regime strategy against Palestinians.
Mika, a political and economic officer stationed at Namibia’s embassy in Austria who attended the UN meeting via a video link, lambasted Israel’s record that he said has for several decades violated the human rights of Palestinians. This, Mika said, includes the right of self-determination, of the Palestinian people. He emphasised that Israel’s human rights violations and discriminatory policies prolong the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territory.
As such, Mika presented three proposals to Israel, which include; dismantling the apartheid system and Israeli settlements; recognising the fundamental rights of Palestinian refugees and providing restitution and compensation for loss of lands and property; and revoking the terrorist designations of Palestinian human rights and humanitarian organisations.
“We call on all states… to refrain from supporting or recognising the illegal occupation apartheid system and settlement activities of Israel in the Palestinian territories,” said Mika.
Meanwhile, Israel told the UN meeting that it was justified in carrying out deadly strikes on Gaza, even as its overall human rights record met resounding criticism from dozens of countries.
Following the pre-dawn strikes, a representative for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) maintained the attacks adhered to the law of armed conflict.
“Today, following months of attacks against Israeli citizens, Israel began a campaign, operation ‘Shield and Arrow’, against Islamic Jihad military targets, which is conducted in accordance with the Law of Armed Conflict,” Avishai Kaplan, with the IDF’s International Law Department, told the UN Human Rights Council.
“Israel directs these attacks only against military targets and takes all feasible precautions to mitigate harm to civilians.”
The Israeli army said that in its Gaza air strikes, it had targeted three leaders of Islamic Jihad, which it considers a terrorist group, as well as its “weapon manufacturing sites”.
The Gaza health ministry said four children were among those killed and 20 people were wounded, some of them in serious or critical condition, after the attacks left buildings ablaze and reduced others to rubble.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva Meirav Eilon Shahar insisted to the UN that the strikes were aimed “to restore peace and security to the citizens of Israel”.
“We will not let these terrorist groups undermine the very strive to coexistence we all wish to achieve.”
The Israeli representatives’ comments came during a so-called Universal Periodic Review, which is a process all 193 UN countries must undergo every four years, where Israel saw its rights record harshly criticised.
Many of the nearly 90 countries that took the floor expressed alarm about escalating violence and condemned abuses against Palestinians.
Some, like the Palestinian representative, and those of Qatar and Namibia, demanded an end to Israel’s “apartheid regime”, while China’s representative maintained the country was “plagued by racism and xenophobia”.
–Additional reporting by
Nampa/AFP