In a letter addressed to UN Secretary General António Guterres on Monday, Amirabdollahian warned against a new genocide against Palestinians in Rafah if Israel goes ahead with plans to invade the city.
“The international community must not let such carnage happen. Any military offensive on Rafah would undoubtedly qualify as another phase in the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian nation,” said the letter.
The Iranian foreign minister also warned that an all-out invasion on Rafah would further endanger the lives of more than 1.5 million people already living in a dire humanitarian situation in the area.
Following is the full text of Amirabdollahian’s letter to the UN chief:
Excellency,
Pursuant to my previous letters concerning the occupying Israeli regime’s genocidal invasion of the Gaza Strip, I feel obliged to highlight, once more, the responsibility of the United Nations to act swiftly and resolutely in order to stop further massacre of the Palestinian people. The high number of innocent people killed and wounded as well as the intensity of demolition in Gaza during the past 4 months of incessant attacks on Gaza are visible evidence of a premeditated plot to exterminate a whole nation, including through their forced expulsion out of occupied Palestine. As of 18 February 2024, close to 30,000 Palestinians, majority of them young children and women, are brutally killed while more than 7000 people remain buried under the collapsed buildings and more than 60,000 are wounded. The Israeli’s genocidal vengeance has not spared anyone who happen to live in the occupied Palestine, as over 85 journalists and more than 135 UNRWA aid workers are also brutally targeted. The occupying regime has combined its indiscriminate military operation with cruel starvation campaign by deliberately depriving Gazans of food, water, humanitarian aid and other essential resources and making Gaza unlivable in order to force Palestinians out of Gaza. This can hardly be characterized as anything other than ‘genocide’.
Excellency,
More than 1.5 million people, most of them displaced, have already been squeezed into the small city of Rafah in the south. "An all-out offensive on the city would be devastating for the 1.5 million Palestinian civilians there who are already on the edge of survival," as you rightly said recently. The international community must not let such carnage happen. Any military offensive on Rafah would undoubtedly qualify as another phase in the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian nation. It is imperative that the United Nations system fulfill its responsibilities in this critical juncture and avert further mass atrocities against the Palestinians who have taken refuge in Rafah. As the Bureau of the General Assembly’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People warned in its 14 February press release, any military incursion into Rafah “will endanger the lives of countless civilians, many of whom are women and an estimated 600,000 children who have already been displaced multiple times”, and would also “violate the Court’s Order of 26 January 2024 issued in the context of the Genocide Convention. ”The UN system and the international community must act united in urging for an instant and permanent cessation of atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank as well as an immediate end to the forced displacement of the Palestinian people and their unhindered access to humanitarian aid. All States are legally and morally duty-bound to stop and prevent the genocide of the Palestinian nation. The United Nations shall urge all of its member States to refrain from collaborating with the occupying aggressor regime, which would constitute their complicity in the commission of the most serious crimes of international concern and would entail their international responsibility. Please accept, Excellency, the assurances of my highest consideration.
Hossein Amirabdollahian
Minister of Foreign Affairs
IRNA