Addressing Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s assertion that his plans for Israel run ‘contrary to a Palestinian state,’ UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warns such rhetoric would ’embolden extremists’.
Israel’s rejection of the idea of a two-state solution with the Palestinians is “unacceptable” and could prolong the war in Gaza, Guterres said Tuesday.
“Last week’s clear and repeated rejection of the two-state solution at the highest levels of the Israeli government is unacceptable,” Guterres said in a speech to the Security Council.
“This refusal, and the denial of the right to statehood to the Palestinian people, would indefinitely prolong a conflict that has become a major threat to global peace and security,” Guterres told the meeting.
Such an outcome “would exacerbate polarization and embolden extremists everywhere,” he added.
Guterres called for the universal recognition of the “right of the Palestinian people to build their own fully independent state.”
Netanyahu has drawn global condemnation in recent days — and defied the United States, which provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid — by rejecting calls for a Palestinian state.
That rejection has come as Israel battles Hamas in Gaza, where the death toll has exceeded 20,000, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
The offensive began in response to the unprecedented October 7 attack by Hamas terrorists, who killed some 1,200 people in Israel’s south and kidnapped 253.
Netanyahu’s office last week said Israel “must retain security control over Gaza,” even after “Hamas is destroyed,” days after the prime minister had rejected Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank.
He proclaimed Israel’s need to have “security control over all the territory west of the Jordan [River].”
But Guterres pushed back against that assertion, demanding Tuesday that “Israel’s occupation must end.”
“The entire population of Gaza is enduring destruction at a scale and speed without parallel in recent history,” he said, also calling for the establishment of new humanitarian crossing points and the resumption of aid operations at the Israeli port of Ashdod.
International organizations have warned that after three and a half months of airstrikes and a ground invasion, the tiny land strip’s two million occupants face an acute humanitarian crisis, including the threat of famine and disease.
