Israel and the UN entered a new moment of tensions this Thursday after the ambassador of the Hebrew country to the UN, Gilad Erdan accused the organization’s secretary general, António Guterres, of having reached a “new level of moral turpitude” after the Portuguese activated article 99 of the founding Charter to ask the Security Council for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
“The secretary general’s call for a ceasefire is actually a call to maintain Hamas’ reign of terror in Gaza,” Erdan wrote in X.
(Also: ‘They took away my willpower’: what the only Arab reporter in Gaza experiences).
The Israeli added that Guterres’ words “only prolong the fighting in Gaza, because they give hope to the Hamas terrorists that the war will end and that they will be able to survive.”
The Israeli Foreign Minister also spoke out against the UN Secretary General, who in a message on X assured that “Your request to activate Article 99 and the call for a ceasefire in Gaza constitute support for the terrorist organization Hamas.”
On Wednesday, in an unprecedented letter to the Security Council, The UN Secretary General warned that the Israeli army’s bombings are causing the “imminent total collapse of public order” in the Gaza Strip.
Guterres sent the letter under Article 99 of the United Nations Charter, which allows the Secretary General to draw the attention of the Security Council on any matter that is considered a threat to international peace.
It is the first time he has directly invoked his most powerful diplomatic tool since taking charge of the world body in 2017.and the first time the office has explicitly invoked the article since 1971.
(Don’t stop reading: Israeli army surrounds the house of Yahya Sinwar, leader of Hamas in Gaza).
“The Secretary General is invoking one of the few powers given to him by the Charter,” commented his spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, who described it as a “dramatic gesture,” since the article had not been invoked “for decades.”
Guterres warned that “the situation is rapidly deteriorating towards a catastrophe that could have irreversible consequences.” for the Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region”, while urging “the international community to use all its influence to prevent further escalation and the members of the Security Council to “press to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe.”
AFP, Efe and Bloomberg
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