Gaza: The role of Bangladesh as UNPO leader
BREAKING all international laws, Israel continues to carry out its genocide against the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza. As the world watches with shock and horror, the United Nations has merely condemned the Israeli assault and questioned the disproportionate use of lethal weaponry on an unarmed population which cannot leave Gaza as it is sealed off from the rest of the world and, according to BBC, “there is no safe place in Gaza.” The international community seems to be powerless to stop this Israeli massacre.
Sadly enough, the world community expects the UN, the very body which created this monster in violation of its own Human Rights Charter in 1948, to effectively contain Israel and try Israeli leaders for crimes against humanity. Since the British occupation of Palestine in 1917, followed by the systematic implementation of the infamous Balfour Declaration by the British Mandatory authorities for the creation of a Jewish homeland under the auspices of the League of Nations, no Zionist leader has been brought to justice for crimes against humanity in Palestinian lands.
Bangladesh, although much neglected in world affairs, can indeed play an important role in influencing the United Nations Security Council to bring this brutal assault of Israel to an immediate end along with the economic blockade imposed on Gaza since the last eight years. Bangladesh, as a leading contributor to the United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (UNPO), can pull out its contingent with immediate effect in response to the complete failure of the UN to stop Israel from committing this heinous crime against the civilian population of Gaza. Through its participation in the UN Peacekeeping missions in the different parts of Africa and the Middle East, Bangladesh has been tacitly condoning and participating in wars initiated and waged by the Western imperial powers ostensibly in the name of promoting democracy, secularism and open societies but in actuality for the control of natural resources and economic trade routes.
Bangladesh should be strong in voicing that International Law is very clear; resistance to occupation is the legitimate right of the victims of occupation. With the failure of the UN to implement its resolutions calling upon Israel, the occupier, to withdraw from all occupied territories and to recognise the rights of the Palestinian people, the Palestinian struggle is a just struggle. It is a struggle for freedom and justice against domination and aggression carried out by the most lethal weaponry that the present world possesses.
The writer taught at The University of The West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica.
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