With ‘Hell Breaking Loose in Lebanon’, Secretary-General Urges Security Council to Tell Hizbullah, Israel ‘in One Clear Voice’: Step Back from Catastrophic War
Sounding the alarm that “hell is breaking loose in Lebanon”, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres urged the Security Council in an emergency meeting to call on Hizbullah and Israel to pull back from the brink of a potentially catastrophic regional war.
Briefing the Council this evening, Secretary-General Guterres noted that Hizbullah and other non-State armed groups in Lebanon and the Israel Defense Forces have recently exchanged fire on an almost daily basis — in violation of Council resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1701 (2006). Lebanese sovereignty must be respected, with full control of weapons throughout its territory. Since October nearly 200,000 people within Lebanon and over 60,000 from northern Israel have fled their homes, with many lives lost. “All this must stop,” he declared.
In the wake of the remote detonation of pagers and handheld radios used by Hizbullah: “Monday was the bloodiest day in Lebanon in a generation, with a reported 569 people killed on Monday and Tuesday, including 40 children and 94 women,” Secretary-General Guterres continued. Further, $170 million is needed to respond to the humanitarian needs of massive displacement in Lebanon; meanwhile, the people of Israel have endured repeated attacks from Hizbullah with more than 8,300 rockets, drones and increasingly high calibre missile attacks on military targets and residential areas.
He noted that Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon, travelled to Israel for consultations, underscoring that military escalation is in no one’s interest, while General Aroldo Lazaro, Head of Mission and Force Commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), has continued his close engagement with the parties, supporting humanitarian access and urging immediate de-escalation.
Despite the dangerous conditions, “our peacekeepers remain in position to mitigate the risk to mission personnel”, Secretary-General Guterres told the Council, expressing sincere gratitude to those who serve along the Blue Line, as well as all troop-contributing countries. Calling for civilians and personnel to be protected, he urged the Council to say “in one clear voice: Stop the killing and destruction. Step back from the brink.” The people of Lebanon, Israel and the world “cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza”, he stressed.
In the ensuing debate, Middle Eastern States and groups condemned the situation, with Najib Mikati, Prime Minister of Lebanon, saying his country is facing a blatant violation of its sovereignty and human rights by the brutal acts of Israel, adding that claims of that country only targeting combatants are clearly not true as Lebanese hospitals are also full of civilians. Council members “must find a solution by putting efforts on Israel” and “achieve an immediate ceasefire on all fronts” to restore security to the region. “We cannot bear to lose another generation because of the war,” he stressed.
Echoing that alarm, Abbas Araghchi, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Iran, said that the new version of terrorism — the weaponization of ordinary communication devices — must be condemned, expressing regret that the Council was not allowed — by the United States — to issue a press statement. As a “serious threat to international peace and security”, he stressed that Israel “does not deserve membership in the UN”. History will judge the Council by the actions it takes or fails to take, he added.
Badr Ahmed Mohamed Abdelatty, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Emigration, and Egyptian Expatriates of Egypt, warned that “what we have been witnessing over the past year in Gaza and what we are witnessing now in Lebanon is likely to expand to other areas in the region if the international community does not shoulder its responsibility to put an end to the machine of death and destruction”. Meanwhile, Ahmed Aboulgheit, Secretary General of the League of Arab States, declared: “We now understand why the Israeli occupation has been rejecting one proposal after another for a ceasefire in Gaza.” Israel “wanted to expand” the “unjust and unacceptable war on Gaza”.
Rebutting those statements, the representative of Israel noted that since 8 October Hizbullah, in a show of solidarity with Hamas, has launched almost 9,000 rockets and hundreds of anti-tank missiles at its civilians, making 70,000 civilians “refugees within their own country”. No nation would sit idly by while its citizens are attacked, he pointed out — noting that on 20 September Israel targeted “terrorist leaders during a meeting where they were planning a second October seventh”.
More so, Hizbullah has made it clear that given the chance, they would storm Israel’s borders and “murder, rape and take hostages back to their dens of horrors”, he continued. Urging for full implementation of Council resolution 1701 (2006) — meaning the Lebanese army will be on the border with Israel, not Hizbullah — and calling Iran “the head of the terrorist snake”, he urged the Council to designate Hizbullah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as terrorist entities.
In further exchanges, Member States shared the Secretary-General’s sense of urgency that hostilities must end. Jean-Noël Barrot, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of France, noted he had called for this emergency meeting as “the situation in Lebanon today may reach the point of no return.” Tensions between Hizbullah and Israel may spill over in the region and into a generalized conflict, the consequences of which “would be incalculable”. Tanja Fajon, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign and European Affairs of Slovenia, President of the Council for September, speaking in her national capacity, said this is the moment for the Council to be united as “we cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza”.
Many delegations, including Malta’s representative, shared the concern that the situation in Lebanon was reaching a “dangerous and devastating tipping point”, with Guyana’s delegate stating: “I am truly at a loss for words to describe the glaringly obvious disaster that awaits us”, and voicing concern that “no party is willing to step back from the brink”.
Echoing the unanimous calls for de-escalation, the delegate of Switzerland urged that Israel’s massive air strikes on Lebanon, which caused numerous civilian casualties, and the indiscriminate rockets fired by Hizbullah on Israel both cease. Japan’s representative once again urged the parties to immediately take all measures to prevent civilian casualties and adhere to international law, with Ecuador’s representative agreeing that “the violence against the civilian population on both sides of the Blue Line may well cause more displacement and become a new humanitarian crisis in the region.”
David Lammy, Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs of the United Kingdom, stressed: “The air strikes must stop now. Talks must start now.” Further, “it is our duty to do all we can to exert maximum diplomatic pressure,” he added. Concurring, Mozambique’s representative urged Council members with significant influence on both sides to work towards de-escalating the ongoing hostilities and emphasized the need for urgent diplomatic efforts.
However, other Members reminded the Council of the costs of the hostilities, with the representative of the Republic of Korea expressing sadness at by the deaths of employees of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) during Monday’s Israeli airstrikes. Sierra Leone’s highlighting that the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said more children died on Monday in Lebanon than all of 2023. He called for provision of $50 million requested by humanitarian agencies for basic needs for a response for the next few weeks.
In a similar vein, Sergey Vershinin, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, said that “in one day, more Lebanese died than in the last 11 months”. Halting a looming war in the Middle East “is possible only if there is an end to bloodletting in Gaza,” he said, adding that the Council has a set of instruments to compel the warring parts to peace.
However, the representative of China said Israel has chosen to expand the regional fighting, which is “nothing short of a mockery of […] international law”. “It is imperative to stop military adventurism and to facilitate de-escalation,” he stressed, urging Israel to halt adventurist acts and all parties to exercise maximum restraint. Ahmed Attaf, Minister for Foreign Affairs and National Community Abroad of Algeria, said Israel’s “brutal aggression” against Lebanon is “an attempt to change Lebanon and to make it into a new Gaza”. With the Council unable to shoulder its responsibilities to end the ongoing genocide there, he warned: “The spillover had already begun.”
Meanwhile, the representative of the United States detailed his country’s diplomatic efforts, underscoring that, since the Council last convened to discuss the situation on Israel’s and Lebanon’s shared border, his country has engaged intensively with all parties in the region with the aim of averting a broader war. “We are working with other countries on a proposal that we hope will lead to calm and enable discussions on a diplomatic solution,” he reported.
Rejecting that narrative, Bassam Sabbagh, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Expatriates of Syria, stressed: “The ongoing barbaric aggression by the Israeli entity against the Palestine, Syrian, Lebanese people could not have taken place without the boundless unlimited support delivered by the United States to that entity, including in terms of impunity — which makes the United States complicit in this aggression,” he said.
Still, Josep Borrell Fontelles, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission, while refusing to play the game of blaming one side or the other, stressed: “What is happening in southern Lebanon cannot be separated from what is happening in Gaza,” requiring the Council to “do everything to avoid southern Lebanon becoming a new Gaza”.