Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov chairs a meeting of the UN Security Council in New York City on July 17, 2024 | Photo: Reuters
New York City: Courtenay Rattray, the UN Secretary-General's chef de cabinet, spoke on behalf of Antonio Guterres on Wednesday, urging all sides to "reach a deal, now" and putting an end to the violence in Gaza.
The humanitarian crisis in the region, he continued, has turned into "a moral stain on us all,” and added, “Amid continued reports of serious abuses against Palestinians in Israeli custody, I reiterate that all detainees must be treated humanely and those held without lawful cause must be released. And this terrible war must end.”
Speaking at the Security Council meeting to address Palestine, he emphasised the importance of “ensuring that governance is restored in Gaza under a single, legitimate Palestinian government,” support for which is “critical.”
Israel is accused by Palestine's permanent observer at the UN, Riyad Mansour, of killing those who should be protected the most, “including children, humanitarians, doctors (and) journalists,” and of defying “every nation on earth” and “every organ ever set up to uphold the most fundamental rules.”
He said: “What is happening in Gaza will go down as the most-documented genocide in history. How cruel could you be? How criminal must you be to bomb the same population, over and over and over again?
“Israel has manufactured a humanitarian catastrophe with famine as its core, starvation, dehydration and the spread of diseases as ultimate weapons.
“(Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu does not care about Palestinian lives or even the hostages’ lives. He does not care about international law or human decency. He only cares about his own political survival. So what will you do to ensure this lunatic is not the one calling the shots, continuing this genocidal war against the Palestinian people?”
The Palestinian envoy vowed that his people would live “in freedom and dignity on their ancestral land. They will accept nothing less, they will accept nothing else but fulfilling this right.
“Being killed, maimed, oppressed, detained, starved, displaced is not our fate. There is a path to peace and prosperity.”
Mansour urged the Security Council to “strengthen those who seek peace rather than arm those who seek extermination; sanction those who colonize rather than allowing them to punish those who oppose the uprooting and displacement of communities; protect the victims rather than the perpetrators; recognize the state of Palestine rather than witness the destruction of the two-state solution,” Arab News reported.
Israel's envoy to the UN, Gilad Erdan, spoke to the council exclusively about Iran, charging the Tehrani government of being “obsessed with killing Jews everywhere, not only in Israel.”
He said: “Iran has a global reach and it’s exporting its bloodshed and destruction to the four corners of Earth.
“If one looks at all of the major conflicts in the Middle East, one finds the nefarious fingers of Iran. The people of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and many others have all suffered because of Iran’s attempts to inflame the region.”
According to Erdan, Israel has faced attacks from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen since the attacks on October 7 of last year, and that “all of the terrorist groups targeting us have one thing in common: they are directed from Tehran.”
He warned: “If we reach a situation of full-scale war in Lebanon, it is only because Hezbollah has shot thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians with the support and funding of Iran. You cannot say you didn’t know.”
Additionally, Erdan cautioned the Iranian leadership that if it continues threatening the region, “it will find that its days are numbered. The proud Iranian people have had enough. The good people of the Middle East have had enough and so have we.”
This month, Russia is the Security Council's rotating president. Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, presided over the meeting. He said a “frank and honest conversation” is needed about how best to immediately stop the bloodshed in Gaza and move toward the long-term settlement of “both long-standing and relatively new conflicts in the region.”
He added: “From the outset, we have highly valued the constructive potential of the Arab Peace Initiative launched by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2002. At the same time, we respected the decision of a number of Arab states to normalize relations with Israel prior to the resolution of the Palestinian question.”
Accusing the US of becoming a direct accomplice in the conflict in Gaza “by providing diplomatic cover for Israel's actions and supplying (it with) arms and ammunition, just as it has done with the situation in Ukraine.
“If the US were to end its support, the bloodshed would stop but the US is either unwilling or unable to do so. It seems its goal is not saving human lives but various manoeuvres that would help to score more points during the election campaign.”
He emphasised the crucial role that the Gulf states may play and mentioned that the results of the most recent Iranian elections as well as the first remarks made by Masoud Pezeshkian, the country's new president give “hope for rapprochement among all the countries of the Gulf in the interests of overcoming long-standing differences and mistrust, and joining efforts to determine the parameters of their own mutual security without external interference, and to speak with one voice to realize the aspirations of the Palestinian people and generally build an architecture of stability and good neighbors.”
The US Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, stated that negotiations towards a ceasefire agreement are moving forward. There are still gaps that need to be filled, but Israel and Hamas have both agreed to the framework for an agreement, which was endorsed by the Security Council on June 10 when it adopted Resolution 2735. She urged council members to keep up the pressure on Hamas to accept the agreement and start implementing it "without delay and without conditions.”
She added: “We’re hopeful that a ceasefire in Gaza would assist diplomacy aimed at deescalating the situation along the blue line, which is necessary to enable displaced people in Israel and Lebanon to return home.”
In "the strongest terms," Thomas-Greenfield denounced the sharp rise in lethal acts of violence committed by radical settlers in the West Bank against Palestinian people, and he reaffirmed Washington's alarm at the recent Israel government announcement of settlement, expansion which she said is “inconsistent with international law and detrimental to the two-state solution.”
Slovenia’s envoy, Samuel Zbogar, said: “There is no moral equality between Israel and Hamas. However, the conduct of both actors against civilians is deplorable and constitutes a crime.
“Neither Hamas nor Israel care about civilians. Hamas is hiding among IDPs (internally displaced persons) and thus endangering lives of their fellow Palestinians, while Israel is showing complete disregard for the suffering of civilians, in (its) pursuit of Hamas.”