Risk of war on Gaza threatening stability of wider region remains high, senior UN official warns

New York (Quds News Network) – The risk of regional spillover of the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza remains high, a top United Nations official told the Security Council yesterday, as delegates underscored that a full-blown Israeli offensive against Lebanon’s Hezbollah would be catastrophic for Lebanon and the wider region.

Khaled Khiari, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for the Middle East and Asia and the Pacific, reported that, since 7 October, 304 Palestinians, including 79 children, have been killed in the occupied West Bank, where settler violence remains a grave concern.

Moreover, the continued daily fire across the Blue Line poses great risk to regional stability, he said, pointing to several instances of strikes deeper into the territories of Lebanon and Israeli-occupied Palestine which raise the risk of conflict.

Also briefing the Council, Itay Epshtain, Special Advisor and Senior Humanitarian Law and Policy Consultant at the Norwegian Refugee Council, shed the light on Israel’s forcible transfer of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians within Gaza, coupled with an intensified campaign of settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

As Israel’s military onslaught on Gaza drives civilians closer to the southern border, the looming possibility of mass deportation to Egypt grows, he warned. The Council should attribute responsibility to Israel, he said, when members of its armed forces allow for—and participate in—settler violence, and when it directly allocates funds and arms to settlement guard squads who often partake in such attacks.

Marwan Muasher, Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former Deputy Prime Minister of Jordan, focusing his briefing on the prospects for a political settlement, said future solutions must address the root cause of the problem: the Israeli occupation.

“The big prison that Gaza practically was, coupled with the lack of any political horizon in the last 10 years to end the occupation, are factors that cannot be ignored.”

However, given that the United States is approaching an election year, the Israeli Government has declared it has no intention of ending the occupation and no side can claim to represent the Palestinians without elections, “the stars are not aligned for a political process that is going to be serious”, he said.

Muasher warned that, without a bold decision to effect a viable two-State solution now, the world will have to deal not only with the occupation, but the more difficult question of Apartheid. “The choice is ours,” he said.

When the floor opened for discussion, delegates underscored the need to tame tensions in the West Bank, calling on Israel to stop settler violence immediately and hold the perpetrators accountable. Many cited an immediate ceasefire as “imperative” to vital humanitarian access, spotlighting the conflict’s spillover potential.

The observer for the State of Palestine said that, for over 80 days, Palestinians—besieged, bombarded, displaced and starved—have been fighting for their lives.

“Why are they getting away with murder at this unprecedented scale?”, he asked, noting that Israel has never been held accountable. He underscored that the “killing of Palestinian civilians is not a collateral effect of the war, as it relies by design on mass and indiscriminate killing of civilians.”

In the same vein, he cited the famine under way as “a method of war” and the collapse of the health system as “the result of premeditated attacks against hospitals and medical personnel”.

Israel’s aim of “voluntary migration” has led to the death of 21,000 Palestinians who are faced with two options: death or forced displacement, he said, adding that the past three months have been the deadliest the West Bank has witnessed in decades, including for children.