‘ACT, you have resolutions, ACT, you have power, ACT, or you become irrelevant, ACT, according to the power given to you by the Charter of the United Nations,’ Riyad Mansour, Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations told the UN Security Council in New York yesterday.
At least 404 Palestinians, including many children, were killed in Israeli terror attacks on Gaza yesterday morning.
Mansour went on: ‘Madame President, ceasefire works. It is the only thing that does. It stopped the bloodshed, it allowed the entry of humanitarian aid Israel had long denied, it allowed the release of hostages and prisoners.’
Mansour also called for the UN to secure and recognise the establishment of the State of Palestine under a ‘two-state solution’.
Olga Cherevko, spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), based in al-Mawasi in southern Gaza, described the bombing as ‘very intense’.
In addition to ‘horrifying’ casualty numbers, Cherevko said preliminary figures suggest tens of thousands of people may be displaced following Israel’s issuing of ‘evacuation orders’.
The Hamas Movement categorically denied the Israeli occupation government’s claim that the Palestinian resistance was preparing for an attack on its forces, accusing it of attempting to justify the massacres it committed at dawn yesterday in the Gaza Strip.
‘The occupation is trying to mislead the world’s public opinion and create false pretexts to justify its premeditated decision to reignite the war and commit genocide against the defenceless civilians in Gaza,’ they said.
Hamas accused the Israeli government of overturning the ceasefire agreement and shirking its obligations.
‘We were committed to the ceasefire agreement until the last moment and were keen to see it continue, but Netanyahu, who is seeking a way out of his internal crises, preferred to reignite the war at the expense of the Palestinian people’s blood.’
Dr Feroze Sidhwa, a general, trauma, and critical care surgeon in California, who is working as a volunteer at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza said of Monday night’s bombing horror: ‘Utter carnage!
‘I was here in Gaza a year ago during the peak of the fighting in Khan Younis and the mass casualties back then looked exactly the same as the mass casualties that I saw today. Mostly children and the other half are mostly women. I did six operations overnight, half them were on small children aged six or below. Most of them are going to go on to die unfortunately.
‘I’m told, I don’t know, but I’m told that about 40 bodies were brought to the morgue directly. But again, it was utter carnage, as usual, when you drop bombs on tents. One incident like this would overwhelm any hospital in the United States. I was a resident during the Boston Marathon bombing. It was an utter disaster, but it was one-tenth of what we saw here today and what we’ll probably see twice today and three times the next day. So it’s impossible for any hospital system to keep up with this.’
- Israelis protesting to demand the release of the captives held in Gaza slammed their government’s decision to resume the war.
‘The only reason the government would like to go back to fighting is to stay in power,’ Roy Emek said at a rally in Tel Aviv. ‘It’s got nothing to do with what’s best for Israel.’
Einav Livne, demonstrating in Eshkol, said she was ‘boiling inside – what’s happening is consciously sacrificing the lives of the hostages and the possibility of returning the dead for a proper burial… the state of Israel, which is supposed to protect its citizens, is simply terrible.’
Former Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, said he and his Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party will rejoin the coalition with Netanyahu’s Likud Party.
