United Nations:
Tunisia, Norway and China have requested yet another emergency UN Security Council meeting be scheduled Friday on the worsening hostilities in between Israel and Palestinians, regardless of ongoing US resistance for the body to take a part in the conflict.
The session would be public and would involve participation by Israel and the Palestinians, diplomats told AFP Wednesday.
The Council has currently held two closed-door videoconferences because Monday, with the United States — a close Israel ally — opposing adoption of a joint declaration, which it stated would not “help de-escalate” the predicament.
According to a diplomat speaking on situation of anonymity, the notion of a third meeting in significantly less than a week was pushed by the Palestinians.
The target of a new meeting is “to try to contribute to peace… and to have a Security Council able to express itself and to call for ceasefire,” stressed yet another diplomat speaking anonymously.
Israel has refused to permit the Security Council to get involved in the conflict, a demand Washington has so far agreed to, diplomats told AFP.
According to various sources, 14 of the 15 members of the Council have been in favor of adopting a joint declaration earlier Wednesday aimed at decreasing tension.
However, the United States saw the Security Council meeting as a adequate show of concern, calling a statement “counterproductive,” diplomats told AFP on situation of anonymity.
– ‘Act with immediacy’ –
In Washington, chief diplomat Antony Blinken announced that a US envoy would travel to the Middle East to seek to calm tensions in between Israel and the Palestinians.
But in a sign of aggravation right after the US move to block a Security Council statement, 4 Council members from Europe — Norway, Estonia, France and Ireland — issued their personal joint statement later Wednesday.
“We condemn the firing of rockets from Gaza against civilian populations in Israel by Hamas and other militant groups which is totally unacceptable and must stop immediately,” the statement stated.
“The large numbers of civilian casualties, including children, from Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, and of Israeli fatalities from rockets launched from Gaza, are both worrying and unacceptable.
“We get in touch with on Israel to cease settlement activities, demolitions and evictions, like in East Jerusalem,” they wrote.
And Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour published a letter to the organization’s top officials Wednesday in which he pleaded with them to “act with immediacy to demand that Israel cease its attacks against the Palestinian civilian population, like in the Gaza Strip.”
– Violence risks spiraling –
He also called for them to demand that Israel “cease all other illegal Israeli actions and measures in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, like East Jerusalem, like a halt to plans to forcibly displace and ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the City.”
When asked about the inability of the Council, the body in charge of world peace, to speak out on the Israeli-Palestinian clashes, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric expressed hope for a turnaround soon, and added that “any international predicament will normally advantage from a sturdy and unified voice from the Security Council.”
UN Middle East envoy Tor Wennesland had warned Wednesday’s meeting that the “predicament has deteriorated because Monday… there is a danger of a spiral of violence,” according to a diplomatic supply.
During a initial emergency meeting on Monday, the United States also refused to back a text proposed by Tunisia, Norway and China calling on all parties to refrain from provocation.
Renewed rocket fire and rioting in mixed Jewish-Arab towns has fuelled developing fears that deadly violence in between Israel and Palestinians could descend into complete-scale war.
The most intense hostilities in seven years have killed at least 65 folks in Gaza, like 16 children, and seven in Israel, like a soldier and one Indian national, because Monday.
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