Guterres: Back Two-State Solution

Sudan Events – Sumaya Sayed

Unremitting conflict in Gaza has already sparked regional insecurity and is clear evidence that the international community needs to throw its weight behind a two-State solution in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to resolve the enduring crisis “once and for all”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Wednesday.

Speaking at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the UN chief condemned the “barbaric” Hamas-led attacks on 7 October in which approximately 1,200 people were butchered in southern Israel and some 250 taken as hostages.

And amid reports of ongoing heavy Israeli bombardment which has left tens of thousands of civilians dead and prompted repeated warnings from UN humanitarians of approaching famine and disease among the 1.9 million people displaced, Mr. Guterres said “spillover” from the conflict in the wider region was “already taking place”.

A fully-fledged confrontation between Israel and Lebanon where rocket and weapons exchanges on the border with Israel have already claimed lives “would be a total disaster”, the UN Secretary-General insisted.

Any escalation “needed to be avoided at all costs”, he said, just as attacks by Houthi fighters in Yemen on ships in the Red Sea had demonstrated that all efforts to date to resolve the Gaza crisis were “not enough”.

“It’s very important to address the humanitarian situation in Gaza, it’s very important to have a humanitarian ceasefire…but we need to find once and for all a total commitment of the international community for a Two-State solution to exist in Israel and Palestine as the basis for a stable and peaceful Middle East for the benefit of everybody,” he said