Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Nuseirat refugee Camp in the central Gaza Strip on December 7, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
Tehran, December 9 (RHC)-- Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei says the world must stop the Israeli regime’s horrific century-long genocide of Palestinians.
Baghaei made the remark in a post on his X account on Monday on the occasion of the anniversary of the adoption of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on December 9, 1948. “It is high time that the int'l community stood up in support of humanity and put an end to this horrific century-long genocide,” he said.
More than 44,700 Palestinians, mostly children and women, have been killed in the Israeli campaign of genocide that began on October 7, 2023 following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by the Palestinian resistance movements.
The brutal military onslaught enjoys unreserved military and political support on the part of the Israeli regime’s Western allies, including the United States and France.
Baghaei added that genocide is defined as a specific set of acts committed in order to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. He emphasized that the Israeli regime is carrying out a “textbook case of genocide” in occupied Palestine 76 years after the adoption of the convention that avowed “never again”.
The Iranian spokesperson said, "Israel is predicated on the goal of Palestinian erasure; its entire political system is directed towards this goal", as Special Rapporteur for Palestine Francesca Albanese has outlined in her October 2024 report to Human Rights Council (A/79/384).
“In fact genocide is part of a century-long project of eliminatory settler-colonialism in Palestine, a stain on the international system and humanity, which must be ended, investigated and prosecuted,” Baghaei wrote.
He noted that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on January 26 ruled that Israel must stop genocide and take all measures to prevent any acts contrary to the Genocide Convention. “The occupying regime has been defying all SIX ICJ's provisional measures and continuing its barbaric genocide,” he added.
The Iranian diplomat warned that the Israeli regime is abusing the complicated situation in Syria these days to expand its genocidal campaign in Palestine.
On Sunday, Armed groups, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militants captured the Syrian capital, which led to the fall of President Bashar al-Assad’s government. Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi Jalali said the government was ready to “extend its hand” to the opposition and hand over its functions to a transitional government.
