ISLAMABAD: The Senate, Monday, continued its debate on the ongoing atrocities on the people of Gaza by Israel, demanding urgent action from the world community to get Israel’s aggression stopped immediately and play its role for the redressal of the plight of the Palestinians.

Opening the debate, Leader of the House in Senate Ishaq Dar said the massacre and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza was a matter of concern not only for the Muslim world but the whole world.

Strongly denouncing the Israeli atrocities in Gaza, he said Pakistan should strongly raise voice for the plight of Palestinian people at different forums including the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC).

Dar said the international community should play its role for the establishment of an independent state of Palestine. He said the Palestinians deserved peace.

Leader of the Opposition in Senate Dr Shahzad Waseem said Israel had proven itself as an oppressor and terrorist state which had no respect for international laws and humanity. Condemning the silence of human rights organisations, he said, the world should resist Israeli aggression in Gaza.

“What the Zionist regime in Israel is doing to the innocent people of Gaza is highest order of tyranny and brutality. Words are not simply enough in condemnation of this brutality. This is worse than any kind of barbarism,” he deplored.

Barrister Ali Zafar from Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), said, people of Gaza were in dire need of humanitarian aid whereas Israel had blocked all aid routes leading to Gaza.

“Who has imposed apartheid and who is committing genocide— and who is suffering?” he said.

“Who is the invader and who is the occupier? It is Israel that is the invader and occupier and Palestinians are the oppressed and the occupied,” Zafar deplored.

“A total genocide is taking place before our eyes and let me say this is worse than the Holocaust,” he lamented.

Caretaker Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti said that banned militant outfits including Baloch Liberation Army, Baloch Liberation Front and Lashkar-e-Balochistan were behind the killing of more than 5,000 innocent civilians in addition to the security forces personnel in Balochistan.

He said people from different ethnicities who were settled in Quetta for over a century were subjected to killings. As a result, their communities had to relocate from Quetta to elsewhere, the caretaker minister said.

Responding to the point of order raised by former chairman Senate Raza Rabbani in Senate, he said the security forces had launched operations against those outfits. He said it was the responsibility of the Parliament to do legislation to further equip the security forces to effectively deal with the militancy.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023