COLOMBIAN President Gustavo Petro has called for armed intervention in Palestine, emphasising the need to build an international army to ‘liberate Palestine’ and stand up to ‘tyranny and totalitarianism’ propagated by the United States and NATO.
Petro made the appeal in his speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, urging countries that oppose genocide to join forces as a united front.
‘I summon the people of the world to join for the peace of Palestine with concrete actions.
‘The moment of words has already passed!
‘What is necessary today is to form a peacekeeping force.
‘What we need is an army formed by countries that do not accept the genocide being perpetrated in Gaza.
‘I invite the armies of Asia, the armies of the Slavic peoples who defeated Hitler, and the armies of the Latin American peoples of Bolívar, Garibaldi, and other heroes of Independence.
‘That is why I invite nations of the world and their peoples more than anything, as an integral part of humanity, to bring together weapons and armies. We must liberate Palestine,’ he said.
Petro further asserted that it is time for action rather than mere words, stressing that ‘they will not just bomb Gaza, not just the Caribbean as they are doing already, but all of humanity that demands freedom’.
He also expressed concern that the actions of Washington and NATO are undermining democracy and contributing to the resurgence of tyranny and totalitarianism on a global scale, emphasising the need to raise the flag of liberty or death.
Petro’s call for armed intervention in Palestine resonated with a similar proposal by Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto, who expressed willingness to provide 20,000 soldiers for an armed force that could be deployed in Gaza.
Israel has launched a genocidal war on Gaza since October 7, 2023, after Palestinian resistance fighters waged the surprise Operation al-Aqsa Flood against the Zionist entity in response to the regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Since March 2nd, the Israeli regime has sealed all border crossings, blocking the entry of humanitarian aid and further deepening Gaza’s already dire humanitarian crisis.
The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed more than 65,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
Separately on Tuesday, Chilean President Gabriel Boric expressed his desire to see Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brought before an international tribunal for genocide in the Gaza Strip, drawing parallels with cases in the Balkans and Rwanda.
‘I don’t want to see Netanyahu destroyed by a missile along with his family,’ he said during his address to the UN General Assembly in New York. ‘I want to see Netanyahu and those responsible for the genocide against the Palestinian people brought before an international court of justice.’
Boric also condemned Israel’s attack on Qatar and its aggression against Iran, highlighting the need for the international community to combat hate and strengthen the multilateral system.
Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, according to a report by a United Nations Commission of Inquiry.
Regarding the situation in Gaza, he acknowledged the difficulty in finding new words to express the ongoing tragedy.
In a poignant reflection, Boric underscored the tragic loss of innocent lives in the Palestinian crisis and drew a parallel to historical atrocities, characterising the crisis as a global humanitarian issue.
‘Thousands of innocent human beings are losing their lives just for being Palestinians … rather than talking about numbers, condemnations, or demands, I would like to talk about humanity today,’ the Chilean president said.
When children lie under the rubble, ‘there is a genuine pain in our country, in Chile’, which has the largest Palestinian community in the world outside Arab states, he added.
In his concluding remarks, Boric stressed the intolerability of violence in any form and called for the transformation of pain and hatred into a pursuit of justice, advocating against making concessions to violence.
- Thousands of citizens have rallied in Caracas to show support for President Nicolas Maduro and their readiness to defend the homeland, as the military showcased its capabilities in drills amid the US military buildup in the Caribbean.
A mass rally, joined by citizens and officials, reaffirmed their determination to resist the destabilising policies of the US under President Donald Trump.
Pedro Infante, First Vice President of Venezuela’s National Assembly, said the march represented unity between the people, army, and police.
Millions of men and women volunteered to take to Bolívar Avenue with weapons in hand, showing their preparedness to defend the homeland at all costs.
Naum Fernández, head of the Caracas government, underlined the importance of public readiness, responding to Maduro’s call to protect the nation.
‘We reject the domination of any empire; we do not want to be under the control of any empire,’ Fernández said.
The event featured a motorcade, a large march, and military demonstrations, organised in response to the significant US military presence in the Caribbean Sea.
President Maduro announced on Tuesday night that a decree is being evaluated declaring a state of external unrest, hours after Trump threatened to ‘blow out of existence’ the Venezuelan president.
The decision was announced during an extraordinary meeting of Venezuela’s Council of State at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas.
According to Maduro, the aim is to ensure that ‘the entire nation’ and every citizen ‘receive support, protection, and activation of all community forces to respond to threats or, if necessary, any attack’ against Venezuela.
The constitution allows a state of internal or external unrest ‘in the event of internal or external conflict that seriously endangers the security of the nation, its citizens, or institutions’.
It also permits such a state of emergency to last 90 days, with the option of extension for another 90.
The president of Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice stated the country is ‘preparing to face any scenario,’ with the judiciary ‘fully complying with the requirements for issuing these decrees, including proposals that will help guarantee national stability’.
The presidents of Iran and Venezuela agree that ‘national unity’ and solidarity are the key to resisting foreign intervention and preserving national sovereignty.
The Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) are also intensifying military-civilian drills and civilian training in weapons use to defend the nation’s sovereignty.
Domingo Hernández Lárez, commander of Venezuela’s Strategic Operations, told El Universal that the initiative seeks to instil patriotism and prepare citizens to respond to any threat against the country.
Hernández said public interest in participating is high, and the programme is building cohesion through Rapid Reaction Units (URRAS).
During the latest exercises, more than 2,500 troops were deployed to the Caribbean island of La Orchila, where Russian-made fighter jets armed with anti-ship missiles carried out operations.
Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino said the ‘Caribe Soberano 200’ manoeuvres involved 12 ships, 22 aircraft, and about 20 vessels conducting amphibious landings and air operations.
In recent weeks, the US carried out three attacks on ships it claimed were transporting drugs from Venezuela.
Trump asserted, without evidence, that each destroyed vessel carried narcotics sufficient to ‘kill more than 25,000 Americans’.
Maduro insists the US deployment seeks regime change and has mobilised millions of militia members nationwide.
Last month, he warned that ‘no empire will touch Venezuela’s sacred soil’ as rhetoric between the two governments escalated.
Venezuelan officials have described the exercises as defensive measures against US aggression in Caribbean waters, which they say fall within Venezuela’s sphere of influence.
- Brazil has formally filed a declaration of intervention at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the case lodged by South Africa against the Israeli regime over its October 2023-present war of genocide on the Gaza Strip.
- Last Friday, The Hague-based tribunal confirmed that Brasilia had lodged the declaration at the court’s registry on September 17th, invoking Article 63 of the court’s Statute.
In line with the article, ‘whenever the construction of a convention’, to which members other than the ones that are part of a case, ‘is in question’, each of these members has the right to intervene.
Accordingly, Brazil argued that it was exercising its right as a party to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, before lodging the intervention.
Explaining its move, the country said the war had violated several articles of the convention.
The decision was first broken by Brazil’s Folha de S. Paulo newspaper on July 23rd.
South Africa launched the case in the same year that the regime brought the coastal sliver under the full-on war, charging that the brutal military onslaught violated the Genocide Convention.
Last October, Pretoria filed a detailed submission to tribunal outlining evidence of the genocide.
As of May, at least nine countries had either formally applied or declared their intention to join the genocide case.
The convention defines genocide as ‘acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’.
Recently, the United Nations Human Rights Council-mandated Commission of Inquiry pointed out that the regime’s officials and forces ‘have had and continue to have’ such genocidal intent towards Gaza’s two-million-plus population.
The brutal military assault has claimed the lives of nearly 65,200 Palestinians, mostly women and children, since its onset.
It has been using a combination of incessant aerial and ground attacks and near-total siege of the Palestinian territory towards maximising suffering and fatalities.
