Following the gruesome crackdown on Palestinians by Israel, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations and also several Internation organizations have called on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to shortlist Israel as among the parties liable for grave violations against children.
At the international conference on protecting children in armed conflict, held in the international conference capital of Oslo on Tuesday Riyad Mansour made the plea and criticized Isreal’s cruel activities toward Palestine.
He said that adding the Tele Aviv regime to the UN’s annual “list of shame,” which includes governments and armed groups that commit grave abuses against children, will act as a deterrence.
read more: Israeli soldiers opened fire on a Palestinian toddler
The envoy further urged UN member states to support the moral, political, and legal measures against Israel, saying it is a necessary and important step towards protecting children during conflicts.
Those included in the blacklist may be subject to Security Council sanctions for their violations and must sign and implement a UN action plan to end their violations in order to be removed from the list.
Also in his remarks, Mansour predicted that 2023 would be more deadly than the previous year, citing the killing of more than 20 Palestinian children by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has called 2022 the deadliest year for the Palestinians in the West Bank since 2006, with over 40 slain Palestinian children.
On Monday, three-year-old Palestinian boy Mohammed al-Tamimi died in hospital, four days after being shot in the head by Israeli soldiers during a raid in the village of Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah.
The toddler is the youngest Palestinian to have been killed by the occupation forces in the West Bank.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned the killing of Tamimi as “a heinous crime against humanity,” and demanded “an urgent international investigation into this crime and other crimes of killing Palestinian children.”
“Israeli political and military officials and settlers must be held accountable to the full extent of the law,” the ministry added.
