Israel / Palestine

The UN’s top relief official Martin Griffiths travelled to the Paris humanitarian conference on Gaza on Thursday to issue an appeal for a significant break in the fighting there, urging greater protection for displaced civilians.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reiterated the call for an urgent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas during a visit to the Rafah crossing and El Arish Hospital in Egypt on Wednesday. 

Gaza might become an international protectorate after the war, the EU has said, adding that neither Palestinian group Hamas nor Israel should ever rule there again.

The Palestinian people ‘are at grave risk of genocide,’ UN special rapporteurs say. ‘The time for action is now.’

The UN chief on Tuesday said levels of aid allowed into the stricken Gaza Strip are “completely inadequate” to meet the rising needs of civilians trapped there amidst the intensifying fighting. Secretary-General António Guterres also reiterated his call for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” between Israeli forces and militants from Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and other militant groups.

The crisis sparked by the Hamas terrorist attack and ongoing Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip is a "political and humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions” said the UN’s independent human rights expert for the Occupied Palestinian Territory this week.

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday adopted a major resolution on the Gaza crisis, calling for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities.”

The EU is to call for “humanitarian corridors and pauses” of the shelling in Gaza to allow food, water and medical supplies to reach Palestinians, according to its latest draft text. An official declaration will be issued after a summit of leaders of the bloc’s 27 members in Brussels on Thursday.

China and Russia on Wednesday vetoed a draft resolution sponsored by the United States, while a second Russian-backed resolution failed to secure sufficient votes in favour, deepening the Security Council’s deadlock over any unified response to address the crisis in Gaza and Israel.

The UN Secretary-General on Wednesday firmly rebuked what he described as the “false” claim by top Israeli diplomats that he had sought to justify the terror attacks of 7 October by Hamas in a speech he delivered to the Security Council.