Palestinians are being slaughtered by Israel, and the UN annihilates their presence even from statements that should deal with the genocide they are living and dying through. The Israeli hostage situation is being used as a diversion, not least from the fact that Hamas proposed a plan which Israel rejected outright. The UN is sending a clear message: any humanitarian ceasefire would be tied strictly to the release of Israeli hostages and only if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agrees to it. So far, Netanyahu has clearly demonstrated that the remaining Israeli hostages are already collateral damage in the genocide inflicted upon Palestinians in Gaza.

Another question was related to Israel requesting the UN’s help in forcibly displacing Palestinians., “We want to ensure that anything that happens is done in full respect of international law, in full respect of civilians,” said Dujarric. “We will not be party to forced displacement of people.” Wrong on both counts. Maybe the UN needs to hear that it is encouraging Israel’s international law violations including genocide, and it is, and has always been, party to the forced displacement of the Palestinian people since entertaining the Zionist colonial ideology and coming up with the 1947 Partition Plan.

Dujarric’s words not only ring hollow in terms of the UN’s purported concern for Palestine, of which it has none, but he also seeks to conceal the UN’s historical role in forced displacement of Palestinians. The UN’s role in creating Israel – a colonial entity on stolen Palestinian land – is equivalent to complicity in forced displacement, ethnic cleansing and now also genocide. And yet, the Palestinians have been forced perpetually by the UN itself to remain subservient to international demands and conjectures. From Israel’s establishment and subsequent international recognition, to the defunct two-state compromise, the result Palestinians have been forced to reap is their own annihilation with the full blessings of the UN. Any official or entity asking Palestinians to abide by international law has always been a hypocrite. At this stage, anyone advocating for less than a permanent ceasefire, full recognition of the Palestinians’ right to anti-colonial resistance and their full political rights to their land and liberation, would do better to remain silent. The colonised have the right to defend themselves against the coloniser. The UN should get that.