February 28, 2025
Cuba ambassador to the UN Rodolfo Benitez
Cuba’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Rodolfo Benítez, on Thursday described the crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinian people as genocide and denounced the complicity of the United States for its support with arms and funds.
The current humanitarian catastrophe is the continuation of more than seven decades of illegal occupation, abuse, attacks and exclusion, he emphasized when he spoke here in an interactive dialogue with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem.
The diplomat rejected Washington’s support for Israel in its outrages in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank with arms, money and the veto in the UN Security Council, and the complicit silence of other countries, which he did not mention.
Cubans rally for Palestine on the steps of the University of Havana, photo; Bill Hackwell
In his speech, the Cuban diplomat asked the forum: “How many more children and women must be massacred before the international community acts and provides the international protection that the Palestinian people urgently need?”
He also warned that every minute of impunity and passivity means that more innocents continue to be killed, maimed, detained and displaced.
Benítez also reiterated the island’s categorical opposition to any plan to expel the Palestinians from their territory, and recalled that to attempt to do so would be classified as a serious crime of ethnic cleansing under international law.
This rejection takes place in a context of growing global condemnation of President Donald Trump’s plans for the United States to take control of the Gaza Strip, in a kind of real estate and tourism project that ignores the consequences for its inhabitants and neighboring countries.
“Gaza belongs to Palestine, not to Washington or Tel Aviv,” he said.
The Cuban representative demanded respect for the Palestinians’ right to self-determination and to build their own independent and sovereign state and insisted on the need to realize that right as the only effective way to stop the spiral of violence, save human lives and chart a viable course towards peace.
Source: Cuba en Resumen