… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Tag: Antonio Guterres

  • UNGA General Debate opens with focus on Israel’s multi-front war and genocide

    Spread the love

    Original article by Aseel Saleh republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    Source: UN Photo

    At the UNGA, world leaders condemn Israel for committing genocide in Gaza and provoking a regional war, calling for an immediate ceasefire and de-escalation

    The General Debate of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, an annual meeting of heads of state and government, began on Tuesday, September 24, in New York City. This year’s theme, “Leaving no one behind: acting together for the advancement of peace, sustainable development, and human dignity for present and future generations,” framed the discussion.

    So far, the ongoing genocidal war waged by Israel against Gaza, Lebanon, and the occupied West Bank, as well as Israel’s repeated assaults on Palestinians, dominated the interventions of heads of state from all continents in this year’s session.

    UN Secretary-General António Guterres opened the debate by emphasizing the growing climate of impunity that allows governments and political actors to violate international laws and human rights conventions, including the UN Charter. “We see this age of impunity everywhere—in the Middle East, in the heart of Europe, in the Horn of Africa,” Guterres stated.

    He described the mass killings and destruction in Gaza as unprecedented, noting that 200 United Nations staff members had been killed, many slain alongside their families. “The speed and scale of the killing and destruction in Gaza are unlike anything in my years as Secretary-General,” Guterres said. He called for an immediate ceasefire, the unconditional release of hostages, and a committed effort toward a two-state solution. Guterres also warned that Lebanon is on the brink of becoming “another Gaza,” stating that the world cannot afford that. “Meanwhile, Gaza is a non-stop nightmare that threatens to take the entire region with it,” he stated.

    Read more: Iran demands accountability for Israeli crimes against Palestinians and Lebanese at UNGA

    Philémon Yang, President of the 79th session of the General Assembly, echoed these concerns. “For almost a year now, the people of Gaza and Israel have been caught in a spiraling cycle of conflict and retribution,” he said. “Indeed, only a two-State solution can end the cycle of violence and instability, ensuring peace, security and dignity for both Palestinians and Israelis.”

    Brazilian President Lula da Silva was the first head of state to address the Assembly, describing the Israeli assault on Gaza and the West Bank as one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent history, with the conflict threatening to spill over into Lebanon. He condemned Israel’s actions as genocide and collective punishment that has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, stating: “The right to defense has turned into a right to vengeance, which prevents an agreement for the release of hostages and postpones the ceasefire.”

    Read more: Biden’s UNGA address espousing democracy and cooperation contrasts with reality

    US President Joe Biden, whose administration has provided financial and military aid to Israel used to massacre Palestinians, claimed that his country has been working with Qatar and Egypt on a ceasefire and hostage deal with the support of the UN Security Council. “Now is the time for the parties to finalize its terms, bring the hostages home, and secure security for Israel and Gaza,” Biden said, reiterating support for a two-state solution with “Israelis enjoying peace and security” and “Palestinians living in security, dignity and self-determination in a ‘state of their own’.”

    While calling for diplomacy, Biden’s remarks were contradictory, as the US has supported Israel’s expansion of the conflict into other parts of the region, including Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran. Despite this, Biden claimed that “a full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest” and that “a diplomatic solution is still possible.”

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused Israel of turning Gaza into “the largest cemetery for children and women in the world.” He condemned the United Nations for its inaction, saying that, as children die in Gaza, the UN system is dying too. He asked: “Are those in Gaza and the occupied West Bank not human beings? Do children in Palestine have no rights?”

    Erdoğan also held the United Nations Security Council accountable for failing to prevent the genocide in Gaza. “What are you waiting for to prevent the genocide in Gaza and to put a ‘stop’ to this cruelty, this barbarism?” he asked. “How long are you going to be able to carry the shame of witnessing this massacre?” He further criticized countries that offer Israel unconditional support and blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for escalating the conflict and dragging the ‘Middle East’ deeper into a regional war.

    Arab and Latin American leaders demand justice for Gaza

    Jordan’s King Abdullah II bin al-Hussein accused Israel of deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians and UN workers, stating, “The UN is under attack, both literally and figuratively.” He criticized the blockade preventing UN aid convoys from reaching Gaza, as aid trucks “sit motionless just miles away from starving Palestinians.” King Abdullah also highlighted the ongoing killings and forced displacement of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7. He added that the Arab world had extended its hand to Israel through “the Arab Peace Initiative” for years, but Israel rejected peace and chose confrontation instead.

    Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, whose country has been mediating efforts for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange, described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a “crime of genocide” and “the most barbaric and heinous and extensive in breaching human values, international charters and norms.” He reaffirmed Qatar’s commitment to securing a permanent ceasefire and ensuring Palestinians gain their legitimate rights, above all an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

    Colombian President Gustavo Petro reminded the international community that Colombia had called for a peace conference for Palestine a year ago, before 20,000 Palestinian children were killed by Israel. He condemned the global community’s double standards, based on a foundation of racism. “The democratic project of humanity is dying,” Petro said, “while those who stupidly believe that the Aryan race should dominate the world prepare to do just that through bombs and terror.”

    “This is what is happening in Gaza and Lebanon,” he added. “When Gaza dies, humanity will die.”

    Original article by Aseel Saleh republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

  • UNRWA Says 6 Workers Among at Least 18 Killed in Israeli Strikes on Gaza School

    Spread the love

    Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Mourning Palestinian men carry the body of UNRWA staffer Yaser Abu Sharar after he was killed in an Israeli strike on the Nuseirat Refugee Camp in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on September 11, 2024. (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    “This school has been hit five times since the war began. It is home to around 12,000 displaced people, mainly women and children. No one is safe in Gaza. No one is spared.”

    The United Nations relief agency for Palestine said Wednesday that six of its workers are among the at least 18 people killed in a pair of Israeli airstrikes targeting a U.N. school in the Gaza Strip where thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinians were sheltering.

    The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said the Israeli strikes on one of its schools, located in Nuseirat in central Gaza, resulted in “the highest death toll among our staff in a single incident” since Israeli forces began bombarding the strip following last October’s Hamas-led attack on Israel.

    “Among those killed was the manager of the UNRWA shelter and other team members providing assistance to displaced people,” the agency said. “Sincere condolences to their families and loved ones. This school has been hit five times since the war began. It is home to around 12,000 displaced people, mainly women and children.”

    Victims of the strikes included women and children.

    Earlier on Wednesday the United Nations said the school had been “previously deconflicted with the Israeli forces.”

    “No one is safe in Gaza. No one is spared,” UNRWA stressed. “Schools and other civilian infrastructure must be protected at all times, they are not a target.”

    Responding to the attacks, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said on social media that “these dramatic violations of international humanitarian law need to stop now.”

    Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice, a U.N. body. International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is also seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders—at least one of whom, Ismail Haniyeh, has been assassinated.

    Over the past 341 days, Israel’s assault on Gaza has left more than 145,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to Palestinian and international officials. Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced, while Israel’s “complete siege” of Gaza has starved and sickened millions of Palestinians, dozens of whom have died of malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of medical care.

    UNRWA says around 200 of its staff members have been killed in more than 450 Israeli attacks on agency facilities since October. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed while seeking shelter under the U.N. flag.

    Responding to Israeli claims—reportedly extracted from Palestinian prisoners in an interrogation regime rife with torture and abuse—that a dozen of the more than 13,000 UNRWA workers in Gaza were involved in the October 7 attack, numerous nations including the United States cut off funding to the agency. Almost all of them have restored funding as Israeli lies have been debunked.

    Bucking this trend, U.S. President Joe Biden in March signed a bill prohibiting American funding for UNRWA.

    Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

  • UN Chief Says Rich Countries ‘Signing Away Our Future’ With Fossil Fuel Development

    Spread the love

    Original article by EDWARD CARVER republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres delivers a special address on climate action in New York in June 2024. (Photo: Fatih Aktas/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    “I must call out the flood of fossil fuel expansion we are seeing in some of the world’s wealthiest countries,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said. “Countries must phaseout fossil fuels—fast and fairly.”

    United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday criticized the world’s wealthiest countries for expanding fossil fuel production, one day after an analysis in The Guardian showed that five Western countries are leading a global surge in oil and gas development.

    Guterres’ remarks came as part of a “call to action” on extreme heat at a press conference in New York, after record-setting world temperatures earlier in the week and a series of deadly heatwaves across the world this year.

    Guterres, who has long been outspoken on the need for climate action, called extreme heat one of the “symptoms” of a “disease” that is the “addiction” to fossil fuels.

    “I must call out the flood of fossil fuel expansion we are seeing in some of the world’s wealthiest countries,” he said nine minutes and 53 seconds into his remarks. “In signing such a surge of new oil and gas licenses, they are signing away our future. The leadership of those with the greatest capabilities and capacities is essential. Countries must phaseout fossil fuels—fast and fairly.”

    The U.N. chief’s comments may have been based on Wednesday’s findings that five Western countries—the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Norway—have significantly scaled up oil and gas licensing this year, despite their international climate commitments. The findings came from an analysis of industry data conducted by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and published in The Guardian.

    The analysis found that the five countries together have licensed or plan to license projects in 2024 that will emit 11.9 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over their lifetimes. The news renewed discussions about whether countries such as the U.S., though they claim to be climate leaders, should be considered “petrostates“—a contemptuous term formerly reserved for countries such as Saudi Arabia and Russia.

    Guterres has long been outspoken on the issue of fossil fuels. At the COP28 U.N. climate change summit in Dubai last year, he spoke forcefully about the need for phasing them out and meeting the 1.5°C target set in the Paris agreement.

    “The 1.5°C limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels,” he said. “Not reduce. Not abate. Phase out—with a clear timeframe aligned with 1.5°C.”

    The loophole-ridden deal that emerged from Dubai didn’t match Guterres’ ambitions, but did call for “transitioning away from fossil fuels.”

    His call to action on Thursday included a four-part plan for dealing with extreme heat: caring for the most vulnerable, protecting workers, boosting resilience, and limiting further temperature rise by phasing out fossil fuels and scaling up renewables.

    Guterres warned that 70% of the global workforce—over 2.4 billion people—is at substantial risk of experiencing extreme heat, and the situation is especially dire for workers in Africa and the Middle East. He called for strong laws to protect workers, which some countries are enacting. The Biden administration recently moved to set the first national workplace heat safety protections in the U.S.

    Original article by EDWARD CARVER republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

  • Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza not acceptable, says UN Chief

    Spread the love

    Original article by Abdul Rahman republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    The UN Security Council meets on the situation in the Middle East, including Palestine (Photo via United Nations)

    Participants in the UN Security Council highlighted need for a ceasefire in Gaza and a long term solution to the Palestinian question as necessary for peace

    On January 23, speaking during the two day extended meeting of the UN Security Council on Palestine, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres underlined that “Israel’s clear and repeated rejection” of a two-state solution is unacceptable. He also warned that this refusal and “denial of the right to statehood to the Palestinian people would indefinitely prolong a conflict that has become a major threat to global peace and security.”

    Most of the countries which participated in the two day proceedings demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and a two-state solution, claiming it necessary for regional and global peace.

    Invoking ever deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Gaza, Guterres termed it “collective punishment” executed by Israeli forces, asserting that “nothing can justify it.”

    More than 25,700 Palestinians have been killed, over 63,000 have been wounded, and nearly 90% of Gaza’s population has been displaced due to relentless bombings and ground offensives carried out by Israeli armed forces since October 7.

    Israel has maintained that its war in Gaza is in response to Palestinian resistance forces, mainly Hamas, attacking inside its borders on October 7, in which nearly 1,200 people were killed and nearly 250 Israelis were taken as hostages.

    Speaking in the meeting, Gilad Erdan, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, claimed that until persons involved in the October 7 attacks are handed over and hostages are released, war in Gaza will not end.

    Most of the members of the UN Security Council repeated the call for an immediate ceasefire and called for better delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

    The Chinese ambassador to the UN, Zhang Jun, also noted that the Israeli leadership’s repeated rejection of a two-state solution is unacceptable, and demanded that it must be rejuvenated by granting Palestinians full membership to the UN.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had, earlier this month, rejected the calls for a Palestinian state, calling it untenable and a threat to Israeli security.

    The need for a two-state solution was raised by the Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Maliki, who denounced the war in Gaza as Israel’s “premeditated effort to inflict maximum pain on the Palestinian population.”

    “No home, hospital, school, mosque, church or UNRWA shelter is safe from Israeli bombardments, 2,000 pound bombs dropped with no care whatsoever for civilian lives,” he noted.

    South Africa, which has taken Israel to the International Court of Justice for its genocide of Palestinians, maintained that there cannot be selective implementation of international law and Israel must face consequences for its repeated violations of the same.

    US positions provide a carte blanche to Israeli crimes

    Speaking during the meeting, the US representative Uzra Zeya claimed the centrality of a two-state solution. She claimed that the US has been making efforts to prevent greater civilian casualties in the Israeli war in Gaza. However, US policies in Gaza were heavily criticized by both the permanent members of the UNSC and others as detrimental to peace.

    Chinese ambassador Jun condemned the repeated use of veto by the US in earlier UNSC meetings on ceasefire resolutions, identifying them as impeding all efforts to peace.

    The US had vetoed resolutions proposing a ceasefire in the UNSC in previous months and tried to excuse Israeli bombings in Gaza as the Zionist state’s right to self defense.

    Jun hoped that all members of the international community must prioritize ceasefire in Gaza, and ways to stop the spread of the war in the region.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asserted that the UNSC must take steps to prevent further destabilization in the region, which has been caused by US policies which vetoes ceasefire resolutions and provides carte blanche to Israeli acts of “collective punishment of Palestinians.”

    Lavrov emphasized that until a ceasefire is implemented the talks about future solutions to the conflict are useless.

    Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amir Abdollahian warned the US against violating Yemeni sovereignty by carrying out repeated air strikes against it. He alleged that it is a trap laid down by Israel with the objective of expanding the war in Gaza to the regional level.

    Abdollahian proposed that a referendum among all Palestinians must be held to find a permanent solution to the Palestinian question.

    Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib emphasized that all stakeholders, including the US, should see that Israel wants to expand the war across the region, and underlined that his country does not want war.

    He emphasized that “what happened on October 7 did not happen in a vacuum” and if no attempts are made to secure a lasting solution “it will happen again,” as there is no peace in the region until there is justice for Palestinians.

    Speaking in the meeting on Tuesday, the Saudi delegate Waleed El-Khereiji said that because of the “Israeli war machine,” tensions in the region, including in the Red Sea and Yemen, are increasing. He demanded that the Security Council make sure that Israel stops its violations of international law.

    On Sunday, in an interview with CNN, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhad al-Saud denied any possibility of normalization of relations with Israel, as proposed by the US, until there is a road map for a two-state solution and an independent Palestinian state. “What we are seeing is Israelis crushing Gaza, the civilian population of Gaza. This is completely unnecessary, completely unacceptable, and has to stop.”

    Original article by Abdul Rahman republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

  • Genocide in Gaza Would Not Be Possible Without Western Complicity

    Spread the love

    Original article by RAMZY BAROUD republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    A pro-Palestinian protester holds a placard accusing Biden, Sunak and Netanyahu of war crimes at a demonstration against Israeli attacks on Gaza in central London, UK.  (Photo by: Andy Soloman/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

    The word ‘hypocrisy’ here does not even begin to describe what is taking place, and the repercussions of this moral failure will be felt around the world for years to come.

    On October 20, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, stood on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, between Egypt and besieged Gaza.

    Guterres was not the only international figure to travel to the Gaza border, hoping to mobilize the international community in the face of an ongoing genocide, in an already impoverished and besieged Strip.

    “Behind these walls, we have two million people that is suffering (sic) enormously,” Guterres said.

    These efforts, however, paid little dividends.

    The spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Ashraf al-Qudra, said in a statement on October 24, that the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza is “too slow (for it to) change the reality” on the ground.

    Never again should the West be allowed to play the role of the mediator, the impartial politician, the judge, or even the self-serving humanitarian.

    This means that the seemingly endless UN Security Council debates, General Assembly resolutions and calls for action did little to alter the tragic situation in Gaza in any meaningful way.

    This begs the question, what is the use of the elaborate international political, humanitarian and legal systems, if they are unable to stop, or even slow down a genocide that is being aired live on TV screens all across the world?

    In previous genocides, whether those accompanying the Great Wars or that of Rwanda in 1994, various justifications were offered to explain the lack of immediate actions. In some cases, no Geneva Conventions existed and, as in Rwanda, many pleaded ignorance.

    But, in Gaza, no excuse is acceptable. Every international news company has correspondents or some presence in the Strip. Hundreds of journalists, reporters, bloggers, photographers and cameramen are documenting and counting every event, every massacre and every bomb dropped on civilian homes. It is important here to note that scores of journalists have already been killed in Israeli attacks.

    Scientific approximations are telling us, for example, that nearly 25,000 tons of explosives have been dropped on Gaza by Israel in the first 27 days of war. It is equivalent to two atomic bombs, like those dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

    When US President Joe Biden callously tried to question the numbers of the Palestinian dead, the Gaza medical staff, who are forced to perform life-saving surgeries on the dirty grounds of hospitals, took the time to prove him wrong. On October 26, they produced a list containing the names of 6,747 Palestinian casualties who were killed in the first 19 days of war.

    Thousands have been killed and wounded since then, yet Washington and its Western allies insist that “Israel has the right to defend itself” even if this comes at the expense of a whole nation.

    The Israelis are not masking their language in any way. The New York Times reported on October 30 that “in private conversations with American counterparts, Israeli officials referred to how the United States and other allied powers resorted to devastating bombings in Germany and Japan during World War II … to try to defeat those countries.” A few days later, Israeli Minister Amichai … has openly declared that nuking Gaza is an option in his country’s genocidal war on the Palestinian people.

    On the day the NYT report appeared, Karim Khan, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), arrived at the Egyptian side of the Rafah border.

    He still used the same guarded language, as if not to offend the sensibilities of Israel and its Western allies. “Crimes allegedly committed in both places have to be looked into,” he said, referring to both Israel and Gaza.

    One could excuse Khan by arguing that legal jargon must be restrained until a thorough investigation is conducted. But thorough investigations are rarely conducted when it comes to Israeli crimes in Gaza or anywhere else in Palestine.

    When an investigation is carried out, international judges frequently find themselves accused by the US and Israel of bias or worse, anti-Semitism. In the case of the investigation spearheaded by a respected South African judge, Richard Goldstone in 2009, the man was forced to retract part of his report.

    Khan knows this too well because he is currently sitting on a large and growing file of Israeli war crimes in Palestine, insisting on delaying the procedure under various excuses. Obviously, the US does not favorably view ICC judges who advance war crime cases against Israel. The anti-ICC sanctions imposed by the Trump Administration in 2020 are an example.

    Many officials in Western institutions are becoming aware of this hypocrisy. On October 28, Craig Mokhiber resigned from his position as the Director of the New York office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights in protest of the UN’s failure to stop “a genocide unfolding before our eyes in Gaza.”

    On October 20, around 850 members of the EU staff signed a letter to EU Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, criticizing her “unconditional support” for Israel.

    The letter was polite and diplomatic, considering the horrendous moral failure of Von der Leyen, especially when her gung-ho approach to the Russian war in Ukraine is compared to her blind support of Israeli crimes in Gaza. “Only if we acknowledge Israel’s pain, and its right to defend itself, will we have the credibility to say that Israel should react … in line with international humanitarian law,” she said.

    The International Olympic Committee, which insists on separating between politics and sports, has no problem meddling in politics when the enemy is a Palestinian.

    The IOC issued a statement on November 1, warning any participant in the Paris Olympics, scheduled for 2024, from engaging in any “discriminatory behavior” against Israeli athletes, because “athletes cannot be held responsible for the actions of their governments.”

    The word ‘hypocrisy’ here does not even begin to describe what is taking place, and the repercussions of this moral failure will be felt around the world for years to come. Never again should the West be allowed to play the role of the mediator, the impartial politician, the judge, or even the self-serving humanitarian.

    This is not a difficult conclusion to reach. Gaza has been turned into a Hiroshima as a result of Western bombs and the blank political check handed to Israel by Western governments and leaders from the onset of the war, in fact, 75 years prior.

    Nothing will ever alter this fact, and no ‘strongly worded’ future statements will ever help the West redeem its collective moral failure.

    Original article by RAMZY BAROUD republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).