New York, 28 July 2020. Ambassador Ana Silvia Rodríguez Abascal, Deputy Permanent Representative and Chargé d´Affaires a.i. of Cuba to the United Nations, chaired today the International Conference on the Question of Jerusalem: Annexation in Practice – Palestinian Lives in Jerusalem; convened by the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and co-organized by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
The Cuban representative, who holds the Vice-Chair of the so-called Palestine Committee, explained that this virtual event is held amid Israel’s declaration of an upcoming annexation of a large part of the occupied Palestinian territories. This action by the occupying power takes place in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, whose negative impact affects the Palestinian territories. She also stated that international solidarity is necessary to support the right of Palestine to its self-determination and independence.
Rodríguez Abascal called upon all Member States of the United Nations and the international community in general to take specific actions to prevent the annexation of the West Bank. Such action, she expressed, might make the two-State solution of one Palestinian State and the other Israeli irreversible.
The speakers of this session of the annual conference on Jerusalem were Maha Abdallah, Researcher of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies of Jerusalem; Hagit Ofran, Director of the Settlement Watch Project at Peace Now in Jerusalem and Osamah Khalil, Professor of History of the Syracuse University in the United States.
Cuba, which has been member of the Palestine Committee since its founding, has fully support a comprehensive, just and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which allows the Palestinian people to fulfill its right to self-determination and to establish a sovereign and independent State based on the pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital and the refugees´ right to return.
Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations