United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Israeli strikes have killed about 2,000 Palestinians since March 18, with Gaza’s humanitarian situation deteriorating “beyond imagination”, Al Jazeera reports.
Giving his remarks at the quarterly UN Security Council open debate on the Middle East, including on the situation in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon, Guterres said the complete blockade of food, fuel, and medicine into Gaza has deprived more than two million people of lifesaving relief.
Gaza must remain an “integral part of a future Palestinian state”, he said.
He said that Israeli military operations in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, settlement expansion, and forcible displacement were “dramatically altering demographic and geographic realities”, adding that illegal Israeli settler violence continued “at alarmingly high levels”, with entire Palestinian communities facing “repeated assaults and destruction, sometimes abetted by Israeli soldiers”.
“Promise of a two-state solution is at risk of dwindling to the point of disappearance,” he said.
The ceasefire and territorial integrity of Lebanon “must be respected”, he added.