United Nations: Palestine Envoy to the United Nations Friday November 03, 2023 accused the organization’s humanitarian chiefs of softening their stand towards Israeli aggressions and slammed them for failing to call clearly for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Speaking during a briefing on the situation in Gaza Strip, Riyadh Mansour also criticized the UN officials for failing to mention “the elephant in the room”, which he said was the collective punishment being dealt to Palestinian children and women in the besieged territory, where the wounded are deprived of essential, life-saving medical supplies, and where the entire population continues to be denied electricity, fuel, medicine, food and water.
“What I heard from you today lacked the intensity and the humanity that you have demonstrated in previous reporting,” he told the UN humanitarian chiefs sitting across from him at the UN headquarters in New York.
They including Martin Griffiths, the organization’s emergency relief coordinator, Lynn Hastings, the resident humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, and Thomas White, director of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza.
Earlier in the briefing, Griffiths spoke of the despair he sees when he talks to the relatives of Israeli hostages, and to Palestinian families in Gaza who have lost loved ones and their homes.
He said the situation that has been unfolding in Israel and Gaza since the start of the war is nothing short of “a blight on our collective conscience”. He called for the release of all hostages and stressed the need to protect civilian infrastructure, and reiterated the need for “humanitarian pauses” in the conflict but stopped short of calling for a ceasefire.
Mansour told the humanitarian officials that their latest comments about the conflict were “stale.”
“You (previously) described the situation as catastrophic; many of you said that it is bordering on crimes against humanity and genocide. But your reporting today did not ask for the thing that you have been asking for forcefully: a ceasefire. Stop the killing. Stop murdering the Palestinians in this massive large number”, he said. “A ceasefire should be the first order of the day. Now, it has changed from ceasefire to pauses, which means, ‘Israel, continue killing the Palestinians but give us a few hours every now and then in order to get food and other stuff, but continue the fighting.’ “You have the responsibility of defending humanity and human beings. You should be saying, clearly and loudly in line with international humanitarian law, that an immediate cessation of all of these hostilities should take place. When war takes place, the first thing that is needed is a ceasefire.”
“You (previously) described the situation as catastrophic; many of you said that it is bordering on crimes against humanity and genocide. But your reporting today did not ask for the thing that you have been asking for forcefully: a ceasefire. Stop the killing. Stop murdering the Palestinians in this massive large number”, he said.
“A ceasefire should be the first order of the day. Now, it has changed from ceasefire to pauses, which means, ‘Israel, continue killing the Palestinians but give us a few hours every now and then in order to get food and other stuff, but continue the fighting.’
“You have the responsibility of defending humanity and human beings. You should be saying, clearly and loudly in line with international humanitarian law, that an immediate cessation of all of these hostilities should take place. When war takes place, the first thing that is needed is a ceasefire.”
Mansour paid tribute to the “brave” rank-and-file UN workers who are on the ground in Gaza “acting according to their mandate, and their full commitment to protect the Palestinian people and help tell the story.”
He then called on the top humanitarian officials to be consistent in telling the story of the conflict as it is, and “not to try to customize the narrative for whatever reasons.”
Mansour added that he was “sorry for being extremely frank with you, because the situation of the Palestinian people in Gaza is beyond comprehension and beyond description, and it requires from all of us to do everything that we can to stop it and to stop it yesterday, not even today.”
White, the UNRWA Director, delivered his briefing to the meeting from Rafah. He discussed the worsening situation there as fuel continues to run out, and warned that “we could soon have a situation where the raw sewage gushes out on Gaza streets.”
White concluded his comments by noting that “the Palestinian people are asking for a ceasefire.”
In response, Mansour asked him:
“Are you a humanitarian officer? You’re not asking for a ceasefire? Only the Palestinians, the victims who are being killed and their children under the rubble, are the only ones asking for ceasefire?”
Griffiths and Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of the UNRWA, last week asked members of the Security Council to call for a ceasefire, echoing a call by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Filippo Grandi, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), was in fact more vocal. Slamming the UN Security Council for inaction, he had strongly batted for a permanent solution to the Israel-Palestine issues instead of “temporary ceasefire” as being demanded by world leaders.
Israel however was fuming at the United Nations and responded to UN Chief and other UN officials’ just demand, called for Guterres’ resignation. The Israelis maintained that a ceasefire would allow Hamas to regroup and rearm, and equate any call for an end to hostilities as tacit support for the Palestinian militant group but did not explain the killings of innocent civilians in Gaza including the UN staff, aid workers, doctors and journalists.
Putting more pressure on the UN which could be why the organisation might be softening its stand was the email sent by the US State Department on the first day of the conflict that said the UN media releases should not mention the word “ceasefire”.
[With inputs from Arab News]
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