Although the dire impact of the Israel-Hamas war has touched many countries in the region and beyond, no foreign country has been so profoundly affected by the war than Jordan. Israel must mitigate Jordan’s concerns to save its critical alliance with its neighbor while fully collaborating in the search for a permanent resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Resolution 2712 was approved in a context of widespread death and wholesale destruction unleashed by the conflict in Gaza and Israel.
According to Israeli authorities, more than 1,200 people were killed -- including 33 children -- and thousands were injured in the abhorrent acts of terror by Hamas on 7 October. Some 250 people were also abducted, including 34 children.
As the global community marks World Children's Day, every child should be guaranteed their rights, including those in the Gaza Strip, where heavy bombardment and military operations by Israel have killed more than 11,000 people, 40 percent of them children.
Two centuries ago, Percy Shelley wrote that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Yet elite power has routinely vetoed their best measures. Still, the ability of poetry to inspire and nurture is precious, including when governments are on protracted killing sprees.
As one of America’s closest allies, Israel has remained heavily dependent on the US —politically, economically, and militarily—since its creation in 1948.
US arms supplies, mostly provided gratis, are channeled via US Foreign Military Financing (FMF), Military Assistance Program (MAP) and Excess Defense Articles (EDA).
The reason I wanted to speak to you was to outline something very specific about Gaza, of course, which is about the approach being taken and planned by the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies to provide aid to Gaza.
Tragically, the numbers of deaths of men, women and children in
Israel and the
Gaza Strip have surged to unprecedented levels following the
Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.
Unless Israel establishes an exit strategy and an end-game that will lead to a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in full coordination with the US and Saudi Arabia, the war against Hamas will only be another brutal violent episode that will prepare the ground for the next conflagration that will engulf the West Bank and potentially set the entire region on fire.
One month into the war in Gaza, Palestine has already seen major setbacks in development that will have severe ramifications for the people of Palestine that will impact any future efforts toward its economic recovery.
The governments of Israel and the United States are now in disagreement over how many Palestinian civilians it’s okay to kill. Last week -- as the death toll from massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza neared 10,000 people, including
several thousand children -- top U.S. officials began to
worry about the rising horrified outcry at home and abroad. So, they went public with muted
misgivings and calls for a “humanitarian pause.” But Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
made clear that he would have none of it.
The killings of thousands of civilians in the ongoing Middle East conflict are largely the result of an uneven battle—a nuclear-armed Israel, equipped with some of the most sophisticated American weapons systems, fighting a rag-tag militant group, Hamas.
There are five measures the Israeli government, along with the US and Saudi Arabia, should put in place to move the peace process forward.
First,
Israel must limit its ground invasion to northern Gaza, as a large-scale war will inevitably inflict massive destruction and thousands of casualties on both sides, especially Palestinian civilians, and put the lives of the hostages at a much greater risk.
Since the 1967 Six Day War, many efforts have been made to reach a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians through mediation conducted by an impartial mediator, face-to face negotiations, international conferences, offering incentives, back-channel talks, interim agreements (in particular the Oslo Accords), and occasionally by an influential party exerting pressure on both sides, especially the US.
During her 2013 visit to Sri Lanka, then UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay wanted to lay a wreath to commemorate the war-dead. "When I go to a country, I like to honour the victims, all victims, victims of LTTE, soldiers, families,” she explained.
Thank you for your presence here with us in New York, and for the special dedication that Brazil has given to peace in our region.
I also pay special tribute to our briefers, and to their teams’ dedicated work in the most unimaginable circumstances on the ground in the Gaza Strip.
For three weeks, President Biden has played a key role in backing Israel’s war crimes while touting himself as a compassionate advocate of restraint. That pretense is lethal nonsense as Israel persists with mass killing of civilians in Gaza.
Last August, 91 UN member states, “in a demonstration of solidarity and commitment”, signed a U.S.-Led Joint Communiqué condemning the Use of Food as a Weapon of War.
Roughly 345 million people – in 79 countries – face acute food insecurity, often caused or exacerbated by armed conflicts, the US said, pointing out that the joint communiqué was born out of the United States’ resolve to once again use its UN Security Council presidency to draw attention to conflict-induced food insecurity.
For the first time since the beginning of a war that claimed the lives of over 220,000 people, a senior Houthi delegation travelled from Yemen to Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh in mid-September.
The world and the Middle East do not need another violent conflict. This is a region that has experienced far too much violence over the years. Hamas’ desperate attacks on innocent civilians was intended to provoke an Israeli overreaction that would, among other things, jeopardise Israeli diplomatic negotiations with the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia and create generalised anxiety within Israel. It was also aimed at demonstrating Hamas’ military capacity and vengeance for years of a humiliating blockade of Gaza. Kidnapping Israeli civilians was callous and brutal but part of a plan to use hostages as bargaining chips around the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
The situation in the Middle East is growing more dire by the hour. The war in Gaza is raging and risks spiralling throughout the region.
Divisions are splintering societies. Tensions threaten to boil over. At a crucial moment like this, it is vital to be clear on principles -- starting with the fundamental principle of respecting and protecting civilians.
“God Is Truth” – Mahatma Gandhi.
The bloodletting in Israel-Palestine is nothing new, perhaps the ferocity and intensity has become much worse and more frenetic. Ever since the Zionist project to establish a Jewish nation took hold in 1948, and flourished thereafter, the local inhabitants, mostly Arab Muslims and Christians, were displaced in the power equation and became dispossessed in every sense of the word.