The United Nations Secretary-General recalled that “any colonization activity is illegal under international law” and that Israel must therefore “stop”. The statements by António Guterres, before the UN Commission on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, came hours after a new Israeli military operation in Nablus, in the West Bank, resulted in 10 deaths and about 100 wounded, including two. Israeli soldiers.
“Each new settlement is another obstacle on the road to peace,” Guterres said in New York. Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government, a coalition of ultra-Orthodox and far-right forces, has made it a priority to reverse its plan to withdraw from settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967 after the Six-Day War. The plan, which dates back to 2005, included the dismantling of 17 settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank – and it’s the latest in Tel Aviv’s crosshairs, legalizing another nine settlements as well.
Israel’s expansionist policy was condemned on Monday by the 15 member states of the UN Security Council, albeit in the form of a statement and not a resolution, i.e. without binding force. “The continuation of Israeli settlement activities dangerously jeopardizes the viability of the two-state solution,” noted the Security Council, which expressed its “dismay” at plans to legalize settlements as they “prevent peace.”
Netanyahu defended himself with an argument similar to that of Russian leader Vladimir Putin regarding Ukraine when he defended the “historical rights” of the Jewish people in the territory of the West Bank, which is home to more than 600,000 settlers.
It was in this occupied territory, in the town of Nablus, that Israeli troops raided to arrest the third suspect in the October murder of a soldier, after the other two had been captured ten days ago. But the operation ended with the death of the suspect and two other members of the new armed group Covil do Leão.
The other seven deaths, one of them a minor, resulted from later clashes between Palestinians and the Israeli army. This year alone, Israeli forces have killed 60 Palestinians, while Palestinian attacks have claimed the lives of 11 people.
Faced with this scenario, António Guterres said that “the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories is at its most explosive point in years”, and issued a call for calm, stating that “incitement to violence is a dead end” and that “nothing justifies terrorism”.
At the same session, Palestinian UN diplomat Riyad Mansour, who accused the Israeli government of “atrocities”, demanded UN action to end the “massacres” against his people. “We are losing credibility, you are losing credibility, this fantastic system is losing credibility,” he lamented, as the PLO secretary general said he would ask for “international protection” for the Palestinian people.
Source: DN
