UN Must Move Beyond Routine Procedures: Palestinian Envoy

Palestine’s UN representative Riyad Mansour told the Security Council on Tuesday that it must use all its authority to enforce international law in the occupied West Bank, urging the international community to move beyond what he called routine condemnations.
Briefing the Council at a high-level session, Mansour said: “Israel’s goal remains the same: to seize the maximum amount of Palestinian land with the minimum number of Palestinians.” He warned that Israel’s “system of evil” was actively displacing families, noting that Palestinians have been deliberately confined to just 30 percent of the Gaza Strip and 40 percent of the occupied West Bank. “The reality is that one state is illegally occupying the land of another,” he said.
Mansour stressed that the 20-point peace plan proposed by US President Donald Trump, reflected in Resolution 2803, must be implemented in full, insisting that its provisions could not be selectively applied. He called on the Council to act before it was too late, arguing that the cost of global inaction far outweighs the burden of intervention.
The United States reiterated its opposition to West Bank annexation while praising recent Israeli government efforts to counter violence, stating that the Palestinian Authority must complete verifiable comprehensive reforms under Trump’s 20-point plan. Washington also highlighted Hamas’s late-July announcement of a formal disarmament plan.
Other member states voiced concern over the fragmentation of Palestinian territory. Somalia noted that over 33,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced — the highest number since 1967 — and warned that occupying forces are increasingly citing “archaeological and historical claims” to justify expanding control. The UK opposed the resumption of a settlement project aimed at splitting the West Bank in two, while Pakistan said the plan was part of a broader effort to break Palestinian territorial continuity. France welcomed upcoming Palestinian Authority elections, while Russia called the US peace plan “fundamentally stalled,” noting that over the past 300 days, an average of one child has been killed daily in Gaza by Israeli forces. Liberia warned that the Council was presiding over the “slow death” of the two-state solution rather than its implementation.