New Delhi: Palestine has expressed concern that India’s abstention on a resolution in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to set up a permanent commission to probe abuses in Israel, including Israeli-occupied Gaza and West Bank, “stifles” international efforts to protect the human rights of the Palestinian people.On May 27, the UNHRC passed a resolution in a one-day special session which for the first time set up a permanent commission of inquiry without a time limit. The resolution, co-sponsored by Palestine, was approved by 24 votes in favour, nine against and 14 abstentions.Three days later, Palestinian foreign minister Riad Maliki wrote to his Indian counterpart that he wishes to “express our concern [at] the position taken by the Republic of India in the Human Rights Council, 30th Special session on 27 May 2021”.In his letter, dated May 30, Maliki said that the resolution was “not an aberration” in the UNHRC but resulted from extensive multilateral consultations.He noted the resolution was a “consolidation” of years of investigation into “Israel’s grave violations” by various institutions, which have not ensued in any accountability.“Therefore, your abstention stifles the important work of the Human Rights Council [in] advancing human rights for all peoples, including those of the Palestinian people,” Maliki told Indian external affairs minister S. Jaishankar.He wrote that the Palestinian people had been “excluded front the applicability of the universal and the indispensable principle of accountability, a prerequisite to justice and peace”.The UNHRC resolution also mandates the Commission of Inquiry to look into “all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity”.Maliki asserted that the “root causes”, which he identified as “dispossession, displacement, colonization, oppression of the Palestinian people and the denial and violation of their every human right by Israel”, should be given top priority.“Otherwise, the situation will not only remain volatile, but will continue deteriorating with far-reaching and grave repercussions,” he added.The Palestinian foreign minister concluded by saying that his government stands ready to “engage positively and seriously” to realise peace in the region.At the UNHRC session, India delivered a statement, but it did not give any reason for its abstention on the resolution.Welcoming the ceasefire, India’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, Indra Mani Pandey, reiterated that none of the parties should attempt to “unilaterally change the existing status-quo, including in East Jerusalem and its neighbourhoods”.“We remain concerned about the continuing violence in Jerusalem, especially at Haram Al Sharif/Temple Mount and other Palestinian territories, and about the possible eviction process in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, an area which is part of an arrangement facilitated by the UN,” said Pandey.He criticised the violence, but with specific condemnation reserved for Hamas’s rocket strikes into Israel. “The indiscriminate rocket firings from Gaza targeting the civilian population in Israel, which we have condemned, and the retaliatory airstrikes into Gaza in the last two weeks have caused immense suffering- and resulted in deaths, including an Indian national—a caregiver in the Israeli city of Ashkelon,” Pandey said.The Indian diplomat stated that recent developments had again underscored the “need for immediate resumption of dialogue between Israel and Palestine, aimed at realising the establishment of two States living side by side in peace within secure and recognised borders”.