Iran supports Palestine’s full membership in UN

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif underlined that the UN should admit Palestine as a full member state, and voiced the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)’s support for the move. “We are ready to support Palestine in international communities,” Zarif said, addressing a meeting of the NAM’s Palestine Committee of on the sidelines of the 68th Session of the UN General Assembly in New York on Friday. Iran is currently holds the rotating chair of the NAM. In November, the UN overwhelmingly voted to grant Palestine non-member observer status. Israel strongly opposes Palestinian statehood, despite the notion's widespread international support. Earlier this week, the 120-member NAM deplored Israel's continued construction activities in the occupied Palestinian territories, and asked the UN Human Rights Council to take action against the Zionist regime's aggressive moves. The condemnation was made in a statement read at the 24th Session of the UN Human Rights Council by Iran's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland, Mohsen Naziri-Asl who also represents Iran as NAM’s rotating president. Naziri-Asl stressed that NAM strongly condemns the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories by Israel. He recalled a recent report of the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the Human Rights Council meeting and also the strong concern expressed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, and called for an immediate halt to Israel’s settlement construction activities in the occupied territories. He called on the international community to force Israel to respect its international undertakings, including respect for the basic rights of the Palestinians. Naziri-Asl reiterated NAM’s support for the Palestinian government and its efforts to put an end to Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine. The Iranian envoy also strongly criticized the mistreatment of jailed Palestinians, specially women and children, by Israeli security forces, and called for their immediate release. Israel has long been pursuing a Judaization plot to change the identity of the region. Ever since the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel has been increasingly exercising its Judaization scenario all across the occupied lands in Palestine and the Golan Heights (in Syria). Last year, Israel's inner cabinet decided to speed up construction of homes for Jews in Arab East Quds (Jerusalem) and in other nearby settlements to punish the Palestinians for winning membership in the UN cultural agency, UNESCO. Since then, Israel has issued announcements for the construction of 2,057 new homes in Arab East Quds and 1,241 in the West Bank, official figures show. At least 200,000 Israelis live in a dozen settlement neighborhoods in East Quds (Jerusalem), which was captured by Israel in 1967 and annexed in an aggressive move never recognized internationally.