The Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, once again demanded this Monday a humanitarian ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and asked Israel and Lebanon, given the tension that is being experienced these days on the border, to stop “playing with fire.”
“Do not play with fire on the Blue Line,” said the Portuguese politician in a statement to the media at the United Nations headquarters in New York, when one hundred days since the attacks by the armed wing of Hamas on October 7 that began the war between the Palestinian Islamist group and Israel in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has deployed more than 200,000 troops to its northern border, where some 80,000 people have been evacuated, while more than 70,000 have fled southern Lebanon due to constant hostilities between the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and the Israeli Army.
In your message, Guterres made it clear that “what we are seeing in Gaza cannot happen in Lebanon. And we cannot allow what is happening in Gaza to continue.”
(Also read: Israel continues bombing Gaza after 100 days of war: 23,968 dead)
After the Hamas attacks, which left some 1,200 dead and hundreds kidnapped, Israel launched an offensive on the Palestinian enclave that has already claimed the lives of more than 23,000 people, most of them women and children.
Numerous UN agencies, as well as a majority of countries, have called for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip in the face of the overwhelming numbers of civilian victims, “unprecedented” in the years that Guterres has been Secretary General of the United Nations.
“Nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” said the Portuguese, who also called for the release of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas.
A man reacts while holding the remains of his mother, in Gaza.
Israel, as well as its main ally, the United States, defends that a ceasefire would only serve for the Islamist group to rearm and attack again.
The Secretary General recalled that the new humanitarian aid coordinator for the besieged enclave, Sigrid Kaag, began her work last week, after the UN Security Council approved a resolution to boost the sending of aid to the Palestinians.
(You can read: South Africa accuses Israel of 'genocide' in Gaza; Jewish state called it 'hypocrisy')
Guterres called on all parties to make efforts to facilitate Kaag's work, and recalled that the obstacles to sending humanitarian aid are clear: safe access, an environment in which to work safely, and the return of commercial activity.
More than 150 UN workers in the enclave have been killed since the Israeli offensive began, the largest loss of life in a single conflict in the organization's history.
EFE
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