Iran vice president insists on ceasefire in Gaza

Ensieh Khazali, who is in New York to attend the 68th annual session of the Commission on the Status of Women, made the remarks in a meeting on Thursday with the President of Egypt’s National Council for Women Maya Morsy.

Morsy said, “We stand by you and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to establish an immediate ceasefire and send humanitarian aid accumulated behind the borders of my country.”

She was referring to the humaniterian aid sent to Gaza but blocked by Israel at the Egypt-Gaza border.

The Israeli regime waged an intense aggression on Gaza on October 7 last year, after a Hamas-led operation on occupied territories. The Israeli military campaign, slammed as genocidal, has left over 31,000 Palestinians dead so far and almost all of the already-suffering territory in ruins. More than 70 percent of the victims are women and children.

Khazali also met with the women’s forum’s chair Philippines UN Ambassador Antonio Lagdameo earlier on Thursday, and demanded that the UN body revoke Iran’s ‘unjust’ removal from women’s commission.

Iran was removed from the 45-nation body after a push by the US in November 2022, amid the deadly protests and riots across Iran.

The Iranian vice president argued that Iran has taken unique measures for Iranian women and girls, and even for Afghan immigrants, adding if the commission was supposed to cancel any party’s membership, it should have been the Israeli regime “for killing thousands of women and children.”