Palestine’s Foreign Minister and the Israeli ambassador to the UN clashed over calls for a ceasefire on Tuesday, as the ambassador pointed fingers at Iran over the conflict. Meanwhile, UN chief Antonio Guterres continues to call for immediate and unconditional release of hostages held in Gaza.
“There are only two paths ahead: one that starts with Palestinian freedom and leads to shared peace and security in our region, or one that continues denying this freedom and dooms our region to further bloodshed and endless conflict,” Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyadh al-Maliki told the Security Council.
“Israel should no longer entertain the illusion that there is somehow a third path whereby it can choose continued the occupation and colonialism and apartheid, and somehow still achieve regional peace and security. This is not a viable path, nor a legitimate path,” he added.
Guterres also addressed members of the Council in New York as fighting intensifies following the October 7 attack on Israel by Palestinian Hamas militants.
Earlier Tuesday, Israel’s army announced that 21 of its soldiers were killed in the deadliest militant attack on Israeli troops since the ground offensive in Gaza started in late October.
The combat casualties could add to mounting calls for a ceasefire and criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the war.
Netanyahu has vowed to press ahead with trying to crush the militant group, and Israeli officials say top Hamas leaders may be operating from tunnels below Khan Younis.
During his turn to address the Council, Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan pointed the finger at Iran “for sponsoring 90 percent of Hamas’s terror budget, as well as arming them and training them.”
The comments come as Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian is visiting the United Nations.
“If the council continues to focus only on providing aid to Gaza, which is truly important – it is important to provide aid to Gaza – but ignores the root of the dire threat to the Middle East and the world, the Iranian threat, then, Mr. President, our collective future will be a very dark, radical Shiite future,” Erdan said.
Meanwhile, the US continued its calls for the protection of civilians and emergency personnel in Gaza.
The Health Ministry in Gaza says more than 25,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the October 7 attack in southern Israel in which militants from the enclave killed around 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages.
The war has caused widespread death and destruction, displaced an estimated 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, and left one-quarter facing starvation.
“I know this may be difficult to imagine at this difficult moment, but it’s President Biden’s firm conviction that two states – with Israel’s security guaranteed – are the only path to durable peace, as well as the only guarantor of a secure and democratic Israel, the only guarantor of Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations to live in a state of their own, and the only way to end this violence once and for all,” said Uzra Zeya, the US Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights.
