NEW YORK: Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to United Nations Maleeha Lodhi welcomed political reconciliation between Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas. Speaking at a debate on the situation in the Middle East, Lodhi said the positive development was not enough to tip scales of justice in favour of Palestinians in their long-suffering Israeli occupation. “The international community must renew its resolve to sustain positive momentum and, as a first step, the illegal and oppressive siege of Gaza by Israel must be lifted,” she told the UN Security Council. She said lack of progress on the Palestinian issue had not only betrayed the hopes and aspirations of generations of Palestinians, it had also sown the seeds of endless hostility and discord in the region. “On the fiftieth anniversary of the illegal occupation of their homeland, the aspirations of the Palestinian people to live a life with freedom and dignity still remain a distant and elusive ideal”, the Pakistan envoy said. Lodhi said a viable, independent and contiguous State of Palestine on the basis of internationally agreed parameters, the pre-1967 borders and with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital was the only sustainable guarantee for enduring peace in the Middle East. “Yet this vision is consistently being undermined by the illegal Israeli settlements in occupied territories,” Maleeha said, while deploring the practice of dispossessing Palestinians of their homes and displacing them from their lands and livelihoods, in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. “Any unilateral attempts by Israel to alter or re-engineer the existing status quo in the old city of Jerusalem, is an unacceptable provocation for billions of Muslims around the world, and must cease,” the Pakistani envoy said, noting that this was highlighted again during tensions surrounding the Al- Aqsa Mosque in July. “Creating ‘alternate facts’ on the ground cannot change historic realities or neutralize the legal rights of people living under foreign occupation, in Palestine, and elsewhere,” she said. Published in Daily Times, October 22nd 2017.