UN chief: No Gaza peace unless Israel recognises Palestinian state
Ending the years-long war in Gaza hinges on implementing a two-state solution and formally recognising Palestine as an independent nation, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said Tuesday.
Speaking at the opening of the 80th UN General Assembly, Guterres said Israel’s deprivation of Palestinian rights has become “absolutely intolerable,” calling recognition of two states the only path to lasting peace.
“The two-state solution remains the only viable alternative to preserve peace,” he said. “Without a two-state solution, there will be no peace in the Middle East and extremism will expand everywhere in the world, with consequences that I consider extremely, extremely negative.”
On September 15, the General Assembly voted 142-10 in favor of a resolution endorsing a two-state solution to the conflict, which has dragged on for nearly 80 years and escalated after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.
Israel and the United States were among the 10 states that opposed the measure.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed there will be “no Palestinian state,” while Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, dismissed the vote as a “one-sided” and “hollow gesture.”
Guterres’ remarks came the same day a UN commission of inquiry concluded that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians under the Genocide Convention, finding that four of the five acts that define genocide have occurred in Gaza.
The findings are the strongest yet in documenting the scale of Israel’s actions.
“It is not in the attributions of the Secretary-General to do the legal determination of genocide. That belongs to the [appropriate] judicial entities, namely the International Court of Justice (ICJ),” Guterres said.
He added that the situation in Gaza is “morally, politically, and legally intolerable.”
“The fact that I have not the competence to do the legal determination of genocide doesn't mean that I do not consider that what's happening in Gaza, after the horrific attacks by Hamas in October two years ago, what happens in Gaza today is horrendous,” he said. “This is something we cannot forget, independently of the names that are given. The truth is that this is something that is morally, politically, and legally intolerable.”
More than one in 10 Palestinians — over 200,000 of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents — have been killed or wounded, according to Israel’s former military chief. Palestinian authorities peg the toll to 65,000 dead and more than 164,000 injured.
This story is written and edited by the Global South World team, you can contact us here.
