Israeli Ambassador Says Palestinians Don't Have the Right to Return Home at UN Security Council Meeting

Construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. (Wikimedia Commons/Troclaire)

JAKARTA - The Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) stated that Palestinians do not have the right to return to their homes.

“Let me be clear, there is no right of return. You all know this,'' said Gilad Erdan at a UN Security Council meeting, reported by Daily Sabah, July 28.

"Demands to return millions of descendants of refugees mean to take away the right of the Jewish nation to self-determination, and this will never happen," he said.

There are currently 5.9 million Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and neighboring countries in the Middle East, according to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations said that there are more than 700,000 Israeli settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem.

"The Israeli occupation is a settler colonial occupation," he said.

"The only way for the international community to end it is to overcome the nature of settler colonialism," he explained.

He called for the UN resolution to be translated into an action plan, with steps that every "peace-loving" country should take to prevent Israel from consolidating its occupation.

It is known that Israel occupied East Jerusalem, where the Al-Aqsa Mosque is located, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Israel annexed the entire city in 1980, a move never recognized by the international community.

Israeli troops and Israeli fanatical Jewish settlers often carry out raids on Al-Aqsa Mosque to provoke Palestinians. In recent years, these attacks have become bigger and bolder.

Tensions have been running high in the occupied West Bank in recent months, amid repeated Israeli raids on Palestinian towns.