For us in the World Peace Council, it was a great satisfaction and joy to see, this September 30, the historical moment in which Palestine's flag was raised at the UN headquarters. The occasion is filled with symbolism and asks for a reflection, since it translates, above all, the hope vested by the Palestinian people in this organization for 70 years.

At the same moment in which the UN celebrates a birthday of evaluation, debates about its trajectory and future and the urgent need for reform – risking to become obsolete and illegitimate if it does not do so – Palestinians denounce, once more, the growing illegal settlements and other crimes committed by the Zionist occupation.

Over 20 years after the Oslo Agreements were signed, as President Mahmoud Abbas remembered, the Palestinian National Authority is the only one respecting them. Negotiations were deliberately protracted, having as their sponsor Israel's greatest ally, the United States, investors in an oppressing entity instrumental for their imperialist interests in the region.

Therefore, Palestine's flag raised at the UN – which happens three years after Palestine's recognition as a non-member State by around 140 countries – should define a fundamental and essential push for the solution of the Palestinian question: the end of the Israeli occupation and accountability for the Zionist leadership behind the war crimes on which this oppressing regime is sustained.

Violent escalations are constant and impunity is what determines this endless cycle, not only killing thousands of people in few days during military offensives but also daily oppressing and humiliating the Palestinian people, in multidimensional violations of their most basic human rights, violations turned into a colonizing regime.

The World Peace Council reiterates its demand for the end of the Zionist occupation of Palestine and for accountability. We denounce and reject the violence of the Israeli regime imposed on the Palestinians and the constant, daily and broad violation of their political, economic, social and cultural rights.

For a free and sovereign State of Palestine, with its capital in East Jerusalem, our solidarity with the resistant Palestinian people!

Socorro Gomes,
President of the World Peace Council