Govts must pressure Israel to stop 'carnage' in Gaza: UN rights chief
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New York City: Governments must exert pressure on the Zionist nation, Israel, to end its “carnage” in Gaza, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk urged on Sunday. In his statement via video, Turk warned that inaction by the governments could amount to complicity in Israel's war crimes and genocide, Arab News reported.
Turk, in his statement from Geneva, said that Israel must take immediate steps to end its unlawful presence in the war-torn enclave and called all parties in the conflict to work toward a two-state solution.
The UN top official’s statement comes ahead of the high-level conference on Palestine, the High-Level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution. The event, which is co-chaired by Saudi Arabia and France, is described as urgent and historic, according to Arab News.
The United Nations World Food Programme warned that the hunger crisis in Gaza has reached “new and astonishing levels of desperation” as almost a third of its population is going days without eating, The Associated Press reported.
The WFP also informed that around 1,00,000 women and children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition.
For months, UN officials, aid groups and experts have warned that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are on the brink of famine without formally declaring one. Even though Israel eased a 2 1/2-month blockade on the territory in May, aid groups say only a trickle of assistance is getting into the enclave and that Palestinians face catastrophic levels of hunger 21 months into the Israeli offensive launched after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack.
UN High Commissioner Turk said that the situation in Gaza and the West Bank is an “unspeakable tragedy” as daily violence and destruction are fueling the “dehumanisation of Palestinians”. Condemning Israeli plans to consolidate the annexation of the West Bank and forcing Palestinians out of Gaza, he said that the Saudi-France chaired high-level conference must deliver “concrete action”.
