Guterres says Israel’s rejection of two-state solution will embolden extremists

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday that it is “unacceptable” for Israel’s government to reject a two-state solution to its “conflict” with the Palestinians, warning that the move would “embolden extremists everywhere.”

Guterres made his comment at a high-level meeting about the Middle East at the UN Security Council, Reuters has reported. “Israel’s occupation must end,” he added.

The 15-member council has long endorsed a vision of two states living side by side within secure and recognised borders. The expectation is that the State of Palestine will cover the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, all territory captured by Israel in 1967 and occupied ever since. However, critics point out that the illegal presence of more than 600,000 Jewish settlers in settlements across the occupied Palestinian territories makes such an expectation increasingly unfeasible.

With what has been called a genocide against the Palestinians being carried out by Israel in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that the apartheid state wants security control over all land west of the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, which covers the Palestinian territories. “It clashes with the principle of sovereignty,” said the far-right Israeli leader, “but what can you do.”

READ: US rejects Israel’s plan for ‘buffer zone’ in Gaza

The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, led an armed incursion into the occupation state on 7 October, targeting Israeli army barracks and settlements. According to Israel, 1,200 people were killed in the incursion, soldiers and civilians, although it has since been revealed that many of the Israelis were not killed by Hamas, but by Israel tanks and helicopter gunships. At least 253 people were taken into Gaza as hostages, some of whom were later released in a prisoner exchange in November.

Post-7 October, Israel launched an ongoing military offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 25,000 Palestinians, most of them children and women, and wounded almost 65,000 others. At least 8,000 are missing, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes. Civilian infrastructure has been targeted and destroyed by Israel, including hospitals, schools and places of worship, both Muslim and Christian.

“The entire population of Gaza is enduring destruction at a scale and speed without parallel in recent history,” Guterres told the Security Council. “Nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki singled out Netanyahu in his Security Council address, accusing him of being “driven by a single goal — his own political survival at the expense of the survival of millions of Palestinians under Israel’s illegal occupation, and [at the expense of] peace and security for all.”

Al-Maliki said it was time for the admission of the State of Palestine to the UN. Such a move requires the 15-member council — where Israel’s allies the US, the UK and France each hold a veto — to make a recommendation of membership to the 193-member General Assembly.

“Israel should no longer entertain the illusion that there is somehow a third path whereby it can choose continued occupation and colonialism and apartheid and somehow still achieve regional peace and security,” added the Palestinian official.

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan said that if Hamas turned over those responsible for the 7 October attack and released all hostages then “this war would be over immediately.” He also said that Hamas could not remain in power in Gaza.

However, he focused much of his statement in the Security Council on Iran, slamming the presence of Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

“How absurd is it that the foreign minister of the number one state sponsor of terrorism, that aspires to destabilise the Middle East, is here. Can you imagine Hitler’s foreign minister participating in a serious discussion on how to defend the Jews during the Holocaust?”

Iran backs Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. The occupation state’s offensive in Gaza has sparked clashes between Israel and Hezbollah along the Lebanese border; attacks by Iran-linked groups on US targets in Iraq and Syria; and Houthi attacks on merchant shipping linked to Israel in the Red Sea.

“Stopping the genocide in Gaza is the main key to the restoration of security to the region,” Amir-Abdollahian told the council. “The killing of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank cannot continue until the so-called ‘total destruction of Hamas’ because that time will never come.”

READ: UN: Israel refusal of aid entering Gaza is ‘unjustified’