UN urges ceasefire to end Gaza’s ‘godawful nightmare’
CAIRO, Oct 21, 2023 (AFP) - UN chief Antonio Guterres pleaded Saturday for a “humanitarian ceasefire” in the war between Israel and Hamas militants that has devastated much of Gaza, demanding “action to end this godawful nightmare”.
Addressing a Cairo summit as the conflict raged into its third week, Guterres said the Palestinian enclave of 2.4 million people was living through “a humanitarian catastrophe” with thousands dead and more than a million displaced.
“We meet in the heart of a region that is reeling in pain and one step from the precipice,” he told the meeting that included the leaders of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and the UAE as well as of Italy and Spain and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
Guterres said “the grievances of the Palestinian people are legitimate and long” after “56 years of occupation with no end in sight”.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II called for “an immediate end to the war on Gaza” and condemned “global silence” on Palestinian death and suffering. “The message the Arab world is hearing is loud and clear: Palestinian lives matter less than Israeli ones. Our lives matter less than other lives. The application of international law is optional. And human rights have boundaries -- they stop at borders, they stop at races, and they stop at religions.”
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi argued that the “only solution” to the conflict is “justice” and said that “Palestinians must realise their legitimate rights to self-determination” and have “an independent state on their land”.
Abbas stressed his demand for a two-state solution and an “end to Israel’s occupation”. “We will not leave,” he repeated three times at the end of his speech.