President Lula’s speech at International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Palestinian Question and the Implementation of the Two-state Solution

I commend President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman for leading this important process.

The question of Palestine arose when the General Assembly adopted the so-called Partition Plan 78 years ago.

The session in which it was approved was chaired by Brazilian Oswaldo Aranha.

On that occasion, the two-state perspective was born. But only one materialized.

The conflict between Israel and Palestine is the paramount symbol of the obstacles faced by multilateralism. 

It shows how the tyranny of the veto sabotages the very reason for the Organization's existence, to prevent atrocities like those that motivated its founding from happening again.

It also goes against its universal vocation, blocking the admission, as a full member, of a State whose creation derives from the authority of the General Assembly itself.

A State is based on three pillars: territory, population, and government.

All have been systematically undermined in the Palestinian case.

How can we talk about territory in the face of an illegal occupation that grows with each new settlement?

How do you keep a population in the face of the ethnic cleansing we are witnessing in real time?   

And how do you build a government without empowering the Palestinian Authority?

As the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories pointed out, there is no more appropriate word to describe what is happening in Gaza than genocide.

Therefore, Brazil decided to become a party to the case submitted by South Africa to the International Court of Justice.

The terrorist acts committed by Hamas are unacceptable. Brazil was emphatic in condemning them.

But the right to defence does not authorize the indiscriminate killing of civilians.

Nothing justifies taking the lives or mutilating more than fifty thousand children.

Nothing justifies destroying 90% of Palestinian homes.

Nothing justifies using hunger as a weapon of war, nor targeting starving people seeking help.

Half a million Palestinians do not have enough food, more than the population of Miami or Tel Aviv.

Hunger doesn't just afflict the body. It shatters the soul.

What is happening in Gaza is not only the extermination of the Palestinian people, but an attempt to annihilate their dream of a nation. 

Both Israel and Palestine have the right to exist.

Working to achieve a Palestinian state means correcting an asymmetry that compromises dialogue and obstructs peace. 

We salute the countries that recognized Palestine, as Brazil did in 2010. We are already the vast majority of the 193 members of the UN.

Brazil commits to strengthening controls on imports from illegal settlements in the West Bank and maintaining a suspension of exports of defence materials, including dual-use materials, that could be used in crimes against humanity and genocide.

Given the Security Council's failure to act, the General Assembly must exercise its responsibility. 

We support the creation of a body inspired by the Special Committee against Apartheid, which played a central role in ending the South African racial segregation regime.

Securing Palestine's right to self-determination is an act of justice and an essential step toward restoring the strength of multilateralism and recovering our collective sense of humanity.

Thank You.