The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, for the first time this Wednesday, resorted to the most powerful tool at his disposal – Article 99 of the Charter of the United Nations – to force the Security Council to discuss the situation in Gaza . The Portuguese urges this body to “help prevent a humanitarian catastrophe” in the Palestinian enclave and calls for “the declaration of a humanitarian ceasefire”, which he considers “urgent”. But nothing requires a resolution from the meeting and Israel denounces “a new moral low” for Guterres.
Article 99 of the UN Charter, an instrument of “preventive diplomacy” that gives the Secretary General political power, says he may “draw the attention of the Security Council to any matter which, in his opinion, is detrimental to the maintenance of international peace.” can threaten. and security”. In the past it was mentioned a few times and used formally only three times: in 1960, in 1979 and in 1989.
The first time the article was used (although not explicitly quoted) was by the Second Secretary General, Sweden’s Dag Hammarskjöld, in response to a request for assistance from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Security Council meeting approved the sending of a peacekeeping force to the country. The second to use the article was the Austrian Kurt Waldheim, following the hostage crisis at the American embassy in Tehran in 1979. The last time the article was used was by the Peruvian Pérez de Cuellar, in 1989, on the occasion of the 14 of the civil war in Lebanon, given that violence had escalated to unprecedented levels. The war would not end until 1990.
Guterres first used this tool on the eve of the two-month Hamas attack on Israel – which he called “heinous acts of terror” and stressed that he condemned – and the start of the war in the Gaza Strip. “More than eight weeks of hostilities in Gaza and Israel have resulted in terrible human suffering, physical destruction and collective trauma in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories,” the Secretary General wrote.
Guterres reports on the number of fatalities and displacement and says there is no “effective protection of civilians” in Gaza. “Amid the ongoing bombardments by the Israeli army, and without shelter or the necessary resources to survive, I believe that law and order will soon be completely destroyed due to the desperate conditions, making even limited humanitarian assistance impossible,” he warns.
“We face a serious risk of the collapse of the humanitarian system. The situation is rapidly deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible consequences for the Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region. Such an outcome must be avoided at all costs,” he says.
However, Guterres’ decision may not have an impact. So far, the Security Council has only managed to adopt a resolution on the situation in Gaza – after four failed attempts. The November 15 resolution, adopted with twelve votes in favor and three abstentions (Russia, Britain and the US), called for the immediate release of all hostages held by Hamas and the creation of humanitarian corridors to help civilians to rescue.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations responded on Gilad Erdan claims that Article 99 can only be used “in a situation where international peace and security are threatened”, and views his call for a “ceasefire” as “a call to maintain Hamas’s reign of terror in Gaza .” And he again calls for Guterres’ resignation, defending a secretary general who “supports the war on terror” and not one who acts “according to Hamas’s script.”
Israel breaks through the defenses
Israeli army spokesman Admiral Daniel Hagari said on Wednesday that they had breached Hamas defenses in the north of the Gaza Strip and also in Khan Younis, in the south. In this city, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said that the army is surrounding the house of the leader of the Palestinian terrorist group, Yahya Sinwar, which is the main target for the Israelis. Hagari limited himself to saying that the house is located in Khan Younis, indicating that no specific buildings are surrounded. “Sinwar is not on the surface, but underground. I’m not going to go into where and what we know. Our job is to catch Sinwar and kill him,” he said.
Source: DN
