UN chief warns that Israel’s rejection of a two-state solution threatens global peace
UNITED NATIONS — The head of the United Nations warned Israel on Tuesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejection of a two-state solution will indefinitely prolong a conflict that threatens global peace and emboldens extremists around the world.
In his strongest language yet on the war between Israel and Hamas, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a ministerial meeting of the UN Security Council that “the right of the Palestinian people to build their own fully independent state must be guaranteed by all.” recognized, and that a refusal to accept the two-state solution by any party must be resolutely rejected.”
The alternative of a one-state solution “with such a large number of Palestinians inside the country, without any real sense of freedom, rights and dignity … will be unthinkable,” he said.
Guterres also warned that the risks of regional escalation of the conflict are “now materializing,” pointing to Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Pakistan. He urged all sides to “step back from the brink and consider the terrible costs of a wider war.
Netanyahu’s rejection of a Palestinian state in any post-war scenario opened a major rift with Israel’s closest ally, the United States, which says the war must lead to negotiations on a two-state solution in which Israel and the Palestinians can live side by side. peace. That goal is supported by countries around the world, as ministers and ambassadors reiterated on Tuesday.
The UN Secretary General also reiterated his long-standing call for a humanitarian ceasefire – a call supported by almost all countries.
But Israeli UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan again rejected a ceasefire, saying that Hamas, which carried out a brutal attack on southern Israel on October 7, is determined to attack and destroy Israel again, and that a halt to the fighting will only allow the militants to “regroup and rearm.”
He urged the Security Council to “eliminate the root of the conflict, which he said was Iran.”
Erdan strongly criticized the Iranian Foreign Minister’s presence at the council meeting, saying the country supplies weapons to Hamas, to Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and Houthi militants in Yemen, “and soon these acts will be carried out under a nuclear umbrella .”
Iran has long denied having nuclear weapons and insists its nuclear program is intended solely for peaceful purposes. But the UN nuclear watchdog has warned that Iran has enough enriched uranium for nuclear bombs if it chooses to build them.
Riyad al-Maliki, the Palestinian foreign minister, said Israel is waging “the most brutal bombing campaign” since World War II, leading to famine and the mass displacement of civilians. “This is an attack of atrocities” that has destroyed countless innocent lives, he said.
The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza says more than 25,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war, which has caused widespread destruction, displaced an estimated 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents and a quarter of the population died of hunger.
Israel began its military campaign in response to the October 7 attacks, in which militants from the enclave killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took about 250 hostages.
Al-Maliki said Israel does not see Palestinians as a people and a “political reality to live with, but as a demographic threat that must be removed through death, displacement or subjugation.” He said these are the choices Israel has offered Palestinians, calling them equivalent to “genocide, ethnic cleansing or apartheid.”
Al-Maliki said there are only two future paths: one begins with Palestinian freedom and leads to peace and security in the Middle East, and the other denies freedom and “condemns our region to further bloodshed and endless conflict.”
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Associated Press writer Michael Weissenstein contributed to this report.