UN warns of ‘catastrophic’ threat to region if fighting escalates between Israel and Hezbollah
NEW YORK: The United Nations expressed grave concern on Tuesday over the risk of an escalation in fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, warning that it would not only cause even greater suffering and destruction for the people of Lebanon and Israel but also “more potentially catastrophic consequences for the region.”
Tor Wennesland, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East, called on both sides to take urgent, immediate steps to de-escalate the situation.
Tensions continue to escalate on the border between Israel and Lebanon. Cross-border exchanges of fire have increased in recent weeks, prompting UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to warn that the risk of the conflict spreading to the wider region “is real and must be avoided.”
Wennesland was speaking during a meeting of the Security Council to discuss the implementation of Resolution 2334, which was adopted in 2016 and demanded an end to all Israeli settlement activities, take immediate steps to prevent violence and acts of terrorism against civilians, and calls on both sides to refrain from actions provocative, inciting and inciting rhetoric.
Wennesland said it was “deeply concerned” about the continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and reiterated that all settlements “have no legal force and constitute a flagrant violation of international law.” He called on Israel to immediately cease all such activities.
Wennesland said the escalating violence and tensions in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were also deeply concerning.
“Intensified armed exchanges between Palestinians and Israeli security forces, along with deadly attacks by Palestinians on Israelis and Israeli settlers on Palestinians, have also exacerbated tensions and led to extremely high levels of casualties and detentions. All perpetrators of the attacks must be held accountable,” he added.
Wennesland blamed the ongoing hostilities in Gaza for the instability in the region and stressed the need for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages and an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
“There is an agreement on the table and it needs to be agreed,” he told council members. “I welcome efforts, including by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, to reach such an agreement.”
He lamented the fact that Israel’s “effective mechanisms for ensuring humanitarian notifications, a safe environment for humanitarian operations, and sufficient access for humanitarian workers to meet humanitarian needs are sorely lacking.”
Wennesland added: “Hunger and food insecurity persist. Although predictions of imminent famine in the northern provinces were averted by increased food supplies, food insecurity worsened in the south.
“Almost the entire population of Gaza continues to face high levels of food insecurity, with nearly half a million people facing “catastrophic” insecurity.”
Senior UN officials told Israeli authorities on Tuesday that they would suspend aid operations across the devastated enclave unless urgent steps were taken to protect aid workers.
The UN World Food Program has already suspended aid deliveries from the US-built pier in Gaza for security reasons. This comes at a time when the amount of basic goods entering Gaza continues to be far below the population’s needs, Wennesland said.
He added that the Palestinian Authority’s fiscal situation remains “very precarious.” Israel’s Finance Minister announced his intention to continue blocking the transfer of all settlement income to the PA and to take actions that will end relations between Israeli and Palestinian banks at the end of June.
Such moves, Wennesland said, “threaten to plunge the Palestinian fiscal situation into an even greater crisis, potentially upending the entire Palestinian financial system.”
Meanwhile, Maximo Torero, chief economist at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, warned on Tuesday of an “extreme risk of famine” in Gaza. He said the latest research shows that more than half of the population has no food supplies at home, and more than 20 percent go days and nights without eating.
Torero said that in northern Gaza, 75,000 people, or a quarter of the population, face catastrophic levels of food insecurity and 150,000 face extraordinary levels of food insecurity.
In southern Gaza, including the Rafah area, more than 350,000 people, or one fifth of the population, are affected by catastrophic levels of food insecurity and approximately 525,000 are affected by an emergency situation.
In response to these findings, the humanitarian organization CARE’s interim country director for the West Bank and Gaza, Daw Mohammed, said: “The process of defining the difference between ‘famine’ and ‘catastrophic food insecurity’ is also irrelevant to Palestinians in Gaza, many of whom have starved to death.” or never fully recover from the ravages of starvation.
“The scale and intensity of the war, as we enter the ninth month of hell for the people of Gaza, makes data collection a life-threatening task and survival an hourly struggle. Rather than waiting for a resolution to the famine, we must heed the call of humanity and act now.
“We need an immediate and lasting ceasefire, a massive increase in the safe flow of aid and aid workers into and around Gaza, access to water, fuel and basic health services for all people, and the release of all hostages. There is no time to wait.”
During the Security Council meeting, US representative to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield accused Hamas of rejecting the US-backed ceasefire agreement.
“Hamas has avoided the calls of this Council and ignored the voices of the entire international community,” she said. “In fact, instead of accepting the deal, Hamas added even more conditions.
“It’s time to end Hamas’s intransigence, start a ceasefire and release the hostages.”
Her Russian counterpart Vasily Nebenzia said the US-backed Resolution 2735, which calls for a ceasefire and was adopted on June 10, was sold to the Security Council “under the pretext of a solution to save Gaza.” This kind of “pig in a poke”, as we warned, turned out to be a dead letter.
He added: “Worse still, an outright lie has crept into the Security Council resolution; it clearly states that Israel agreed to the peace proposal of international mediators. However, this has not yet been confirmed in West Jerusalem and they are repeating this while announcing their firm intention to completely destroy Hamas.
“Ultimately, none of the stages provided for in Resolution 2735 have been implemented. The council was essentially blindly dragged into the misfortune and took steps to bless a plan that had no chance of being implemented from the start.
“We call on the members of the Security Council to take a more diligent approach in the future to the decisions they support and to reflect on their actual content.”