Warning of the risk of regional spillover, Assistant Secretary-General Khaled Khiari today (29 Dec) told the Security Council that “recent weeks have seen some of the most intensive Israeli operations in the West Bank since the Second Intifada.”
Across the occupied West Bank, Khiari said, “heightened tensions between Israeli security forces and Palestinians, intensive violence and widespread movement restrictions have continued,” and noted that since 7 October, “304 Palestinians, including 79 children, have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”
Since 7 October, four Israelis, including three members of the Israeli forces, have been killed in attacks by Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Another four Israelis were killed during an attack by Palestinians in West Jerusalem.
Khiari, who is the Assistant Secretary-General for Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, for the Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations, said, “the continued daily exchanges of fire across the Blue Line pose a grave risk to regional stability. Increasingly, there have been strikes on civilian areas, with civilian casualties, on both sides of the Blue Line, in addition to a rising number of fatalities among combatants.”
He told the Council that “there have been several instances of strikes deeper into the territories of Lebanon and Israel, raising the spectre of an uncontained conflict, with potentially devastating consequences for the people of both countries.”
He also reported attacks on United States bases in Iraq and Syria, with the US conducting airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, as well as Israeli air strikes inside Syria.
Turning to Yemen, Khiari said, “the continued Houthi threat to maritime navigation in the Red Sea is of growing concern. It risks exacerbating regional tensions, and further escalation, and also has potentially grave political, economic, and humanitarian ramifications for millions in Yemen and the region. This threat also has potential ramifications at a global scale if regional and international shipping and supply chains are adversely impacted by further escalation in the Red Sea.”
In his address to the Council, Palestinian Ambassador Majed Bamya said, “the killing of Palestinian civilians is not a collateral effect of the war. This Israeli assault relies by design on mass and indiscriminate killing of civilians. The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is not the consequence of a war. It is a tool employed by Israel to pressure people and force them out. The famine under way is not an undesired outcome of the war. It is starvation as a method of war. The collapse of the health system is not an unforeseen result of a war. It is the result of premeditated attacks against hospitals and medical personnel. The indiscriminate killing, the mass arrest, filmed humiliation of Palestinians, enforced disappearance and abduction, and summary executions aimed at terrorising the Palestinian people as a whole.”
For his part, Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan said, “just yesterday morning. Rockets were fired from Lebanon at population centres in Haifa and Akko in northern Israel. Two days ago, rockets were fired at the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona. And three days ago, Hezbollah fired guided anti-tank missiles at Saint Mary's Church in the western Galilee, injuring 11 people. Yet these brazen attacks on civilians, towns, cities and holy sites do not warrant an urgent briefing here in this Council. Do these attacks sounds like a mere spill-over. Is this violence occurring magically on its own? Is it not clear that genocidal terrorists are seeking to murder Israeli citizens every single day.”
In a statement Secretary-General António Guterres has voiced grave concerns over further spillover of the conflict in Gaza, against the backdrop of escalating violence between Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the relentless bombardment in the war-ravaged enclave.
The Secretary-General appealed to all members of the international community to do everything in their power to use their influence on the relevant parties to prevent an escalation of the situation in the region. He reiterated his call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.
