Nothing justifies collective punishment. With these words, in an interview with France Press, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres criticized the situation in the Gaza Strip, saying that Israel imposes collective punishment on the population of the Palestinian enclave, which is experiencing unimaginable suffering, BTA reported.
"The level of suffering in Gaza, the level of death, the level of destruction is unimaginable. This cannot be compared to anything I have seen since I have been Secretary-General,” said Guterres, who has been in office since 2017.
"Of course we condemn all the terrorist attacks by “Hamas”, as well as the hostage-taking, but the truth is that nothing justifies the collective punishment of the Palestinian population, and that is what we are seeing in a dramatic way in Gaza” , he declared.
The war in Gaza followed the attack by “Hamas” against South Israel on October 7 last year. Then over 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage. According to the Palestinian health authorities in Gaza, at least 41,226 people have died in the war. More than 200 humanitarian workers, most of them working for the United Nations, were also killed, France Press recalls.
And for the sake of all these civilians, holding both Hamas and Israel to account for its massive violations of international law is necessary, Guterres said.
In this context, he does not stop calling for an immediate ceasefire. On stalled talks in Guterres, he expressed hope that an agreement would be reached, although he said it would be very difficult to achieve this.
Guterres is not hoping for a rapprochement with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the general policy debates at the annual session of the UN General Assembly next week. The secretary general said that Netanyahu had publicly stated that he did not want to meet with him. “But that is not the most important thing. What is important is the suffering of the people, what is important is the absence of a political solution, what is important is the constant denial of the two-state solution and the undermining of that two-state solution through actions on the ground, land grabbing, expulsions, new settlements, all built illegally," Guterres said.
He also opined that it was "unlikely" his proposal for a UN mission to "monitor" a hypothetical cease-fire in Gaza, would be accepted by the parties to the conflict.
In response to accusations that the UN is powerless to end conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine and elsewhere in the world, Guterres blamed member states and in particular the Security Council and its 15 members for decisions taken or not taken
The Council and the international financial institutions are "outdated, they don't work, they are unfair,", he repeated. "We have tried to find solutions to the wars, but the problem is that we don't have the power and sometimes the resources to do it," he said.