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Arab News
a day ago
- Politics
- Arab News
International summit on 2-state solution ‘deepens the illusion' of peace, says Israeli envoy to UN
NEW YORK/LONDON: Ahead of an international conference on a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, Israel's ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, told reporters on Monday that the summit 'does not promote a solution, but rather deepens the illusion.' Formally titled the High-Level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, the two-day event began on Monday at the UN headquarters in New York, co-chaired by Saudi Arabia and France. With humanitarian experts warning that Gaza is on the brink of famine, the summit has been described as urgent and long overdue. But Danon said: 'Instead of demanding the release of the hostages and working to dismantle Hamas' reign of terror, the conference organizers are engaging in discussions and plenaries that are disconnected from reality.' Jonathan Harounoff, the international spokesperson for Israel's mission at the UN, confirmed that his country would not participate in any conference that 'doesn't first urgently address the issue of condemning Hamas and returning all of the remaining hostages.' The US also boycotted the event. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for whom the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant in November in connection with its investigation into war crimes during Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, said the international conference 'rewards terrorism' and accused France of helping to legitimize what could become 'an Iranian proxy state.' The UN's humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, on Sunday warned that the situation in Gaza was dire, with widespread hunger, children wasting away and people risking their lives in their attempts simply to obtain food. While recent moves by Israeli authorities to ease restrictions and allow more aid into the territory represented a step forward, he said, it was not enough. Vast quantities of aid, safe access routes, consistent supplies of fuel, efforts to protect civilians, and an immediate ceasefire are urgently needed to prevent further catastrophe, he added.
Mint
2 days ago
- Politics
- Mint
Israel Lifts Some Gaza Aid Curbs in Bid to Defuse Hunger Outcry
Israel rolled back curbs on aid distribution to Gaza over the weekend in an effort to defuse a growing international outcry over the hunger crisis convulsing the shattered Palestinian enclave. The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday suspended some military operations against Hamas to facilitate the movement of UN relief convoys, and restored electricity supplies to a desalination plant in Gaza for the first time since March. The UN World Food Program has warned for weeks that the entire population of 2.1 million people in Gaza faces crisis levels of food insecurity, while scores of aid groups say starvation is now spreading quickly. That's seen world anger toward Israel's government on the rise amid increasing reports and images of emaciated babies, children crammed into soup queues, and men tussling over bags of flour. While continuing to deny accusations that it's deliberately starving Gazans, Israel has now began parachuting in food supplies. That's a delivery mechanism previously tried by several foreign air forces a year ago, but which was abandoned at the time amid concerns about scale and safety. 'There's a campaign full of lies under way' that's created 'a mistaken impression of famine in Gaza,' Danny Danon, Israel's ambassador to the UN, told Tel Aviv radio station 103 FM. 'Therefore the cabinet decided yesterday to bring in aid, in order to show the world that we are heeding the claims, even if we disagree about the facts.' Sunday's decision was announced by the military, without comment from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Defense Minister Israel Katz. It marked a de facto reversal of Israel's cut-off of UN-led humanitarian relief in March after the previous Gaza ceasefire expired, a tactic Netanyahu aides said at the time would deprive Hamas of a means of controlling the populace while feeding its own fighters. Mahmoud Mardawi, a senior Hamas official, described the about-face on Telegram as 'not a solution, but rather, a belated and twisted confession of a crime having been committed' by Israel. Negotiations on a new truce faltered last week, with Israel and the US accusing Hamas of stonewalling and hinting that a further escalation in the more than 21-month-old war could follow. 'I think they want to die, and it's very, very bad,' US President Donald Trump said of the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamist fighters on Friday. 'It got to a point where you're going to have to finish the job.' Israeli troops and tanks have already overrun 75% of the Gaza Strip, skirting areas where Hamas is believed to be holding 50 hostages captured in October 2023. The proposed truce would have seen half of the hostages returned, in exchange for hundreds of jailed Palestinians, and boosted aid for Gaza, over a period of 60 days. Recovering the remaining hostages, however, would have required Israel commit to ending the war, Hamas said. Israel has ruled that out so long as Hamas, which is on terrorism blacklists in much of the West, retains weaponry and rules in Gaza. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a far-right member of Netanyahu's coalition government, said he was excluded from the decision to restore UN aid. His ideological kinsman, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, also opposes pausing the assault on Hamas and wants a total Gaza takeover — even if that poses a risk to the 20 hostages believed to be still alive. Netanyahu on Friday said Israel and the US were 'considering alternative options to bring our hostages home, end Hamas's terror rule, and secure lasting peace for Israel and our region.' That followed a threat by Katz that the 'gates of hell will open' if Hamas didn't free the hostages soon. Asked on 103 FM if Israel should declare its willingness to end the war in return of all of the hostages, Danon said such a move would require changing the war goals. 'The objectives right now, I'd remind you, are to recover the hostages and remove Hamas rule and strike at its capabilities,' he said. 'And the government has to decide whether it's deeming that this has or has not been achieved.' More than 59,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, which doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel launched the offensive in retaliation for a Hamas cross-border raid on Oct. 7, 2023 in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 kidnapped. It has lost 455 soldiers in Gaza combat, including three over the weekend. Aid convoys from Jordan and Egypt rolled into Gaza on Sunday. The Israeli military said 'humanitarian corridors,' around which it would hold fire, were being established in coordination with the UN for deliveries to areas where ground forces aren't active. When it sidelined the UN relief network earlier in the year, Israel set up a US-backed alternative, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, with the aim of excluding Hamas. The foundation says it's distributed enough food staples for more than 90 million meals, yet has acknowledged not being able to reach all of Gaza's population. It's also been dogged by allegations that hundreds of Palestinians aid-seekers have been shot dead near its distribution points — incidents for which the GHF and IDF have denied responsibility. With assistance from Fadwa Hodali. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
The National
4 days ago
- Politics
- The National
UN aid chief demands evidence after Israel accuses staff of links to Hamas
UN aid chief Tom Fletcher has demanded that Israel provides evidence for its accusations that staff with the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) were affiliated with Palestinian militants Hamas, according to a letter seen by Reuters on Friday. At a UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday, Israel's UN Ambassador Danny Danon declared that Mr Fletcher and OCHA were no longer neutral and that hundreds of OCHA employees would undergo security vetting. Israel would also restrict OCHA visas to one month, he said. "Israel has uncovered clear evidence of Hamas affiliation within OCHA's ranks," Mr Danon told the 15-member council, without providing evidence. In a letter to the Security Council on Thursday, Mr Fletcher said Mr Danon's remarks were the first time any such concern had been raised and that the accusations were "extremely serious and have security implications for our staff". "I expect the Israeli authorities to immediately share any evidence that led them to make such claims to the council," Mr Fletcher said. He noted that around the world OCHA engages with all parties to armed conflict to secure humanitarian access, press for the protection of civilians and promote respect for humanitarian principles, adding: "As Israeli authorities know, our contacts with Hamas have also supported hostage releases." Israel is committed to helping civilians and getting aid to those in need, Mr Danon said, although he warned: "We will not work with organisations that have chosen politics over principles." The war in Gaza broke out on October 7, 2023, when Hamas killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and took some 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel's military campaign has killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and reduced much of the enclave to ruins. "We must hold all parties to the standards of international law in this conflict," Mr Fletcher wrote in his letter. "We do not choose between demanding the end to the starvation of civilians in Gaza and demanding the unconditional release of all the hostages." Israel, which controls all supplies entering Gaza, denies it is responsible for shortages of food, despite reports of dozens of deaths from starvation and malnutrition and repeated warnings from international aid organisations. In the first two weeks of July, the UN children's agency Unicef treated 5,000 children facing acute malnutrition in Gaza. World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday Gaza was suffering man-made mass starvation caused by a blockade on aid into the enclave. Israel will allow foreign countries to parachute aid into Gaza, Israeli army radio quoted a military official as saying on Friday. Aid agencies warn air drops are both costly and dangerous.
RTÉ News
4 days ago
- Politics
- RTÉ News
Israel bypasses UN already struggling for relevance
The relationship between Israel and the United Nations has always been strained. But the war in Gaza has pushed it to breaking point. Now as pressure grows on UN agencies in Gaza, so do fears over the permanent bypassing of the United Nations. Will that deal a blow to the multilateral system, at a time when the UN is already reeling from severe financial crisis, not to mention questions over its very relevance? "Israel's sidelining of UN agencies in Gaza – particularly in the delivery of aid – offers a chilling glimpse of what a world without a functioning United Nations might look like: starving people being shot while queueing for food and malnourished medical staff too weak to treat civilians," Christine Ryan, director of the Prevention of Crimes against Humanity Project at New York's Columbia University, told RTÉ News. For nearly eight decades, the United Nations has been engaged on the issue of Israel and Palestine. After all, it was a UN resolution in 1948 to partition the former British mandate into Jewish and Arab states, that sparked the first Arab-Israeli war. The Security Council, the UN's highest decision-making body, still regularly meets, as it did this week, to discuss the conflict in the Middle East including what is still called "the Palestinian Question". At that meeting, the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations confirmed that the head of the UN's humanitarian agency (OCHA) in Gaza and the West Bank would be ejected at the end of this month and the visas of other international staff restricted. "We will no longer allow anti-Israel activity under the guise of humanitarianism," Israel's Ambassador Danny Danon told the Security Council. This appears to be part of a pattern. Last year, Israel accused UNRWA – the UN's Palestinian Refugee agency that has housed, fed and educated Palestinians for the past 70 plus years – of complicity with Hamas and banned it from operating on Israeli soil or having any contact with Israeli officials. The UN's peacekeeping force in Southern Lebanon – UNIFIL – similarly faces deep opposition from Israel's government. The test for the blue-helmets force will come at the end of next month when the UN Security Council is due to renew its mandate. It remains to be seen whether all five permanent members of the body – including Israel's staunchest ally the United States – will vote in favour. In New York, the United States continues to shield Israel from UN action and scrutiny. The acting US Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea told the Security Council that accusations of genocide against Israel made by other council members were "politically motivated and categorically false". "They are part of a deliberate, cynical propaganda campaign as Hamas attempts to win symbolic victories to compensate for total defeat in war," she said. Earlier this month, in an unprecedented move, the Secretary of State Marco Rubio sanctioned the UN's special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, accusing the independent expert of spewing "antisemitism" and "open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West". That seemed to have a chilling affect. Just a week later, all three members of a UN Commission of Inquiry set up to investigate alleged violations of international law in Israel and Palestine suddenly quit. Their resignations were applauded by the Israeli mission to the UN. And then, there is the deliberate bypassing of UN aid mechanisms in favour of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – a US and Israel-backed venture widely condemned by other member states over mass killings of starving Palestinians near aid distribution sites Israel said the GHF was necessary to prevent aid being hijacked by Hamas. UN officials maintain there is no evidence of widespread diversion. But UN-distributed aid has been limited to a trickle, as famine conditions set in. "I think it's important to underscore that the UN and UNRWA in particular, is the only organisation that can deliver services at scale in Gaza," said Ciarán Donnelly, senior vice president of crisis response at International Rescue Committee. "Everything that we do as humanitarian NGOs is incredibly important but ultimately is a complement to the basic services of water, of shelter, of food distribution, as organised by the UN," he told RTÉ News. "So, if the UN isn't able to operate, then it simply makes our job exponentially harder in terms of trying to deliver the impact that we're focused on". UN experts fear the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation could set a precedent for aid distribution not just in the Middle East, but in other parts of the world. This week, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said he was "very disturbed by the undermining of the UN and the relief organisations," and called for the "primacy of the United Nations" to be restored. It's a tall order in the current climate, as the world's major powers sit across from each other at the UN Security Council in scornful disagreement. Diplomatic paralysis in the face of war in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Haiti and elsewhere has raised serious questions about what the UN stands for. Meanwhile, the United States - hitherto global champion of the international rules-based order enshrined in UN multilateralism, since the end of the Second World War - abruptly ditched it in favour of Trump's "America First" foreign policy. The Trump administration pulled out of UN bodies including World Health Organisation, the Human Rights Council and UNESCO, slashed funding to agencies like UNICEF and the World Food Programme and dismissed the values championed by the UN, especially on things like gender and diversity, as "woke". "There's no question about the fact that the UN is being actively undermined," said Anjali Dayal, associate professor at New York's Fordham University, "and is, in a real way, facing an existential crisis". "But I would argue that that's largely financial at the moment," she said. The UN Secretary General António Guterres directed officials to cut the UN workforce by a fifth, while staff at UN agencies have already been laid off in their thousands. Although some UN insiders welcome the financial jolt which they hope may usher in much-needed and long-overdue reform. And it's not just Washington tightening the pursestrings. A pivot to defence spending has prompted Europe to claw back cash from multilateral institutions and international aid. "The UN might not survive the loss of this degree of funding," said Ms Dayal. Indeed, "very senior international officials" speculate that the UN may go the way of the League of Nations – the UN's ill-fated predecessor - according to Richard Gowan, UN Director of the International Crisis Group. But some experts – perhaps the more optimistic among them - believe the current crisis may reinvigorate global commitment to the United Nations. "If you had asked me a few months ago, I would have probably spoken about the UN being at a breaking point," said Ms Ryan. "But the horror wrought by this private aid organisation in place of UN agencies has made the relevance of the UN front of mind," she said. There was "no clearer warning to states, donors and civilians" on why the UN remains critical, she added. On Thursday, the French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would recognise Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly in September – the first G7 country to do so. The fact he chose the UN - and not, say, the Elysée Palace - as the forum for this grand gesture is notable. The UN's annual jamboree will follow the conference on the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, co-chaire by France and Saudi Arabia, due to kick off this Monday. That confab was postponed in June after Israel and the United States bombed Iranian nuclear sites. Israeli government officials have slammed the conference as a "reward for terror," while the United States issued a diplomatic cable to UN member states ahead of the June-scheduled dates, warning them not to attend. But countries appear to be undeterred. 40 government ministers are expected to turn up in New York next week to take part - a sign, perhaps, that the UN is still viewed as relevant in many capitals around the world. Asked how a UN conference had any hope of breathing life into a two-state solution that has failed for decades, is bitterly opposed by the Israeli government and while war continues to rage, a French diplomatic source said: "Sometimes from the darkness, the light can emerge."
Al Arabiya
4 days ago
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
UN aid chief demands evidence after Israel accuses staff of links to Hamas
UN aid chief Tom Fletcher has demanded that Israel provide evidence for its accusations that staff with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs were affiliated with Palestinian militants Hamas, according to a letter seen by Reuters on Friday. At a UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday, Israel's UN Ambassador Danny Danon declared that Fletcher and OCHA were no longer neutral and that hundreds of OCHA employees would undergo security vetting. Israel would also restrict OCHA visas to one month, he said. 'Israel has uncovered clear evidence of Hamas affiliation within OCHA's ranks,' Danon told the 15-member council without providing evidence. In a letter to the Security Council on Thursday, Fletcher said Danon's remarks were the first time any such concern had been raised and that the accusations were 'extremely serious and have security implications for our staff.' 'I expect the Israeli authorities to immediately share any evidence that led them to make such claims to the council,' Fletcher said. He noted that around the world OCHA engages with all parties to armed conflict to secure humanitarian access, press for the protection of civilians and promote respect for humanitarian principles, adding: 'As Israeli authorities know, our contacts with Hamas have also supported hostage releases.' Israel is committed to helping civilians and getting aid to those in need, Danon said, though he warned: 'We will not work with organizations that have chosen politics over principles.' The war in Gaza was triggered on October 7, 2023, when Hamas killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and took some 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel's military campaign has killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and reduced much of the enclave to ruins. 'We must hold all parties to the standards of international law in this conflict,' Fletcher wrote in his letter. 'We do not choose between demanding the end to the starvation of civilians in Gaza and demanding the unconditional release of all the hostages.' Israel, which controls all supplies entering Gaza, denies it is responsible for shortages of food.
