While Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas held the US responsible for the “bloodshed” in Gaza in response to his veto of a UN resolution on a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, the Israeli government blamed Secretary General of the Palestinian Authority The United Nations, António Guterres, is siding with the Palestinian fundamentalist group by resorting to Article 99 for the first time since taking office to request a pause in hostilities.
These are just two examples of extreme positions in a conflict that has left more than 17,700 dead on the Palestinian side, including more than 7,000 children, according to data from the Hamas Health Ministry. Israeli authorities report 1,200 deaths in the October 7 Hamas attack in which Palestinian militants took 240 hostages; one hundred were released during the brief ceasefire that also allowed the release of two and a half hundred Palestinian prisoners.
As the Israeli army (IDF) says there is house-to-house fighting and Israeli tanks surround Khan Yunis on both sides, the UN warned: nine out of ten Palestinians in the Gaza Strip cannot eat every day and half the population is starving . In an interview with Reuters, Carl Skau, deputy director of the UN World Food Program, explained that conditions on the ground do not allow food deliveries and assured that nothing had prepared him for the “fear, chaos and despair” he encountered in Gaza.
The NGO Save the Children also accused Israel this Saturday of using hunger as a weapon of war against the civilian population of Gaza, calling for an “immediate and definitive ceasefire.” Deliberately separating the civilian population from food, water and fuel and deliberately preventing supplies from reaching the population is the use of hunger as a weapon of war, which inevitably has a deadly impact on children,” this NGO warned, citing several cases of children and families who do not have access to water, shelter and food for several days in a row.
Speaking to the Palestinian agency Wafa, the Hamas government’s Minister of Public Works and Housing, Mohamed Ziara, assured that more than 25% of Gaza’s urban areas have been wiped off the map by Israeli attacks since the start of the war . The government official stated that more than 250,000 homes have been partially or completely destroyed and nearly a third of infrastructure, including roads, water pipes, sewage, electricity and communication lines, is unusable.
While on the ground, Israel continued its offensive criticism of the US veto in the Security Council, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan complaining that, thanks to the US blockade, this United Nations body became part of the Israeli Protection Council.
The Security Council resolution received thirteen votes in favor, a veto from the US and one abstention from Great Britain.
The vote was the result of an unprecedented initiative by António Guterres, invoking Article 99 of the United Nations Charter. This allows the Secretary General to draw the attention of the Security Council to an issue that could endanger international peace and security.
“Is this justice?” Erdogan asked, reaffirming that “the world is bigger than five,” in an allusion to the permanent members of the Security Council (China, the US, France, the UK and Russia, all with veto power), a legacy from after the Second World War.
The US deputy representative to the UN, Robert Wood, assured that the resolution was divorced from “reality” and “would not have moved a single needle on the ground.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen stated that a ceasefire “could have prevented the collapse of the terrorist organization Hamas, which commits war crimes and crimes against humanity, and would have allowed it to continue ruling the Gaza Strip.”
Hamas strongly condemned the US position, calling it “immoral and inhumane,” and saying it constituted “direct participation” in the “massacres.”
Attacks against Hezbollah and Iran’s warning
As fighting continues in the Gaza Strip, the air force has hit Hezbollah targets on Israel’s northern border, including command centers of the Lebanese Shiite militias, in response to attacks from Lebanon.
Hostilities between Israel and Lebanese Shiite militias in the border area, the worst since 2006, intensified after the war that broke out on October 7 following the Hamas attack. Since the start of hostilities in the border area, more than 120 people have been killed, eleven of them in Israel (seven soldiers and four civilians).
Iran, a major supporter of Hezbollah, warned on Saturday of the possibility of an “uncontrollable explosion” in the Middle East if the United States continues to support Israel in the war against Hamas. The warning was left during a telephone conversation with António Guterres by the head of Iranian diplomacy Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
“As long as the US supports the crimes of the Zionist regime and the continuation of the war (…) there is a possibility of an uncontrollable explosion of the situation in the region,” the Iranian minister said.
Amir-Abdollahian welcomed Guterres’ decision to resort to Article 99 of the UN Charter. “The use of Article 99 is a courageous action on your part to keep peace and is supported by global public opinion,” said a statement issued by the ministry in Tehran and quoted by AFP.
Source: DN
