The UN Security Council held a session on developments in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, in light of the Israeli escalation in the West Bank and the ongoing aggression on the Gaza Strip for about 11 months.
The emergency session of the UN Security Council was held based on two invitations; the first from Algeria to discuss developments in the Palestinian territories, and the second invitation from Israel; to discuss the issue of 6 prisoners whose bodies were recently recovered from Gaza by its army. Tel Aviv claims that Hamas liquidated them, despite the latter accusing it of killing them through an air strike.
Algeria’s UN ambassador, Amar Benjamaa, said the staggering death toll and destruction reveal a barbarism aimed at erasing Palestinian identity.
He added during the session that the International Committee of the Red Cross has reported since last October more than 8,700 missing Palestinians, most of them from the Gaza Strip, while the occupation authorities refuse to provide any information about them or allow the Red Cross to visit them.
It’s time for decisive action.
Palestine’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, said that Israel continues to wage war on the Palestinian people and seeks to impose a military solution to the conflict.
Mansour added, during the Security Council session, that Israel is showing the world its readiness to use the most horrific means to achieve its colonial goals, and that the Palestinian people have been exposed to a war that has no parallel since the Nakba (1948), and instead of ending the Nakba, Israeli fascism seeks to achieve a Palestine without Palestinians.
The Palestinian delegate stressed that criticism and concern alone do not affect an extremist (Israeli) government determined to commit the worst crimes time after time, and that it is time to take decisive measures.
In turn, Rosemary DiCarlo, Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, reiterated the Secretary-General’s call for the immediate and unconditional release of the hostages in the Gaza Strip.
She pointed out that while the focus is on ending the killing and destruction in Gaza, the worrying situation in the West Bank cannot be overlooked.
Call to alleviate suffering
Idem and Sorno, Director of Operations and Advocacy at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), also called on the UN Security Council to alleviate the suffering in the Gaza Strip.
Wesorno stressed the inability to meet basic humanitarian needs in Gaza and the West Bank, noting that there is no winner in this war, and that civilians bear the brunt of its horrors.
She said that the brutality in Gaza knows no bounds, and that attacks on humanitarian aid workers continue, with 295 humanitarian aid workers killed since October 7, 2023.
She expressed deep concern about Israeli military operations in the occupied West Bank, saying that Israel had used excessive force in the West Bank.
The UN official added that respect for international humanitarian law and international human rights law is not optional.
As for the US representative to the UN Security Council, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, she said that her country is doing its utmost to return the American hostages to their homes and all hostages to their families.
She added that the execution of the six hostages at the same time that the names of the individuals to be released in the ceasefire agreement were being negotiated raises doubts about Hamas’s sincerity, and reveals once again what she described as the ugly truth about the corrupt ideology that Hamas represents, she said.
For her part, the executive director of the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, Yuli Novak, said that the Israeli government is waging a war that is making Gaza an uninhabitable area.
Novak added in an intervention during the Security Council session that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not want to recover the hostages and reach a deal, but rather to continue the war.
Hamas sends a message to the Council
The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) said that the Security Council’s meeting to discuss the file of Israeli prisoners in the Gaza Strip, in light of the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, raises signs of disapproval and astonishment.
The movement added in a statement that “the occupation’s attempt to impose its false narrative regarding the cause of the death of the six prisoners is a blatant continuation of the series of lies.”
She stressed that the fate of the prisoners in the Gaza Strip is in the hands of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alone, and that he and his army staff bear full responsibility for the killing of the six prisoners.
The statement warned that Netanyahu’s continued policy of intransigence, evasion and obstruction of reaching an agreement would put the lives of more prisoners at risk.
Hamas called on the Security Council to take immediate action to stop the genocide and investigate the crimes of ethnic cleansing and field executions. It also called on the Council to carry out its duties in obligating the occupation to stop its flagrant violations of international law against Palestinian prisoners and release them.
With full American support, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7, leaving more than 135,000 dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amidst massive destruction and deadly famine.