The Islamic Republic’s ambassador to the United Nations has urged the world to do more to counter Israel’s “expansionist” policies
Published 16 May, 2026 04:54
| Updated 16 May, 2026 06:09
Palestinian children in the Al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City on May 14, 2026. © Anas Zeyad Fteha / Anadolu / Getty Images
The international community must take a more active approach to the plight of displaced Palestinians and the Israeli occupation of their land, Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Amir-Saeid Iravani said on Friday.
Iravani made the appeal on the 78th anniversary of the Nakba, a term used in the Arab and Muslim world to describe the flight and expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Today, around six million Palestinians are registered with the UN refugee agency UNRWA, many of them living in refugee camps.
There is an “urgent necessity for international mobilization to confront the root causes of this situation,” Iravani said, calling for resistance to Israeli occupation and “expansionist policies.” Support for Palestine “must not remain limited merely to expressions of sympathy,” he added, arguing that the world must abandon “approaches that have failed to achieve peace or justice.”
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“Surrender is not an option. History will remember kindly those who resisted oppression and defended freedom and the right to self-determination, and it will pass judgment on those who, through silence or indifference, paved the way for injustice,” the diplomat said, according to ISNA.
The situation has been further exacerbated by Israel’s war in Gaza, with the UN saying that the majority of the enclave’s pre-conflict population of 2.1 million has been displaced.
Officials in Israel have increasingly rejected calls for a two-state solution, arguing that the establishment of a fully independent Palestinian state would threaten their country’s existence.
“There will not be a Palestinian state. It’s very simple: it will not be established,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in November 2025, according to the Times of Israel.