- ARAB NEWS
- 28 Apr 2024
Since 1975
NEW YORK CITY: Arab ambassadors to the UN joined Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour on Friday in calling for an immediate ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas and for a mechanism to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to people in need in Gaza, where supplies of water, food, fuel and other essential items are running out.
Mansour said all Arab leaders stand united in their call to “stop this carnage against the Palestinian people now. We need to save human lives and we need to save them immediately.”
Pointing to the ambassadors to the UN from all Arab countries who were standing beside him at the UN headquarters in New York, he added: “We are unified as an Arab group. For those who think that there is a single Arab diplomat that is not standing with Palestine at this moment, look at our unity.”
Mansour was speaking outside the Security Council chamber while a meeting was taking place inside to discuss the humanitarian situation in Gaza. It was called by Brazil, which holds the rotating presidency of the council this month, and backed by the UAE.
“As humans, as defenders of international humanitarian law, as a Security Council, we should not allow another Nakba, after 75 years of our first Nakba, another Nakba to fall on our people, by depopulating the Gaza Strip of its 2.3 million (residents) and throwing them outside to Egypt, and making it an Egyptian problem,” Mansour said.
The UN was informed overnight by the Israeli military that the entire population of northern Gaza, totaling about 1.2 million people, along with all UN staff and people sheltering in UN schools, health centers and clinics, were being ordered to relocate to the southern part of the territory within 24 hours.
Mansour called on Guterres “to use the moral power of the office of the secretary-general to help us to implement this three-point plan: ceasefire, humanitarian assistance and (to prevent) ethnic cleansing taking place.”
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said such an evacuation is “impossible to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences.” He appealed for “any such order to be rescinded” and added: “It could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation.”
Gaza is experiencing a complete electricity blackout, and essential health, water and sanitation services have been brought “to the brink of collapse,” Dujarric said.
“Hospitals only have a few hours of electricity each day as they are forced to ration depleting fuel reserves,” he added. “They also face severe shortages of medicine and blood.”
No humanitarian aid can currently enter Gaza as border crossings remain shut, he said, and UN workers on the ground report that the organization’s supplies in the territory have hit “the bottom of the barrel.”
Jordan’s permanent representative to the UN, Mahmoud Hmoud, is also the president of the Arab Group at the UN. He said the group’s first goal is to ensure that a resolution adopted on Wednesday by the ministerial council of the Arab League is implemented. It calls for an end to the conflict, the provision of humanitarian access to Gaza “to avoid the calamity and the catastrophe that is happening now before our eyes,” and for the international community and the UN to prevent the forced transfer of Palestinians from northern Gaza to the south, which it said “will lead to mass displacement of the Palestinian population.”
