Palestinian issues

The Bureau of the United Nations General Assembly Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People is following with grave concern the latest developments in Gaza.

The following statement was issued today by the Spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres:

​​​​​​​Addressing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians as they arise cannot replace efforts to resolve core issues driving the conflict, a senior United Nations official for the region told the Security Council today, as Council members stressed the need to implement a two-State solution while other delegates criticized the organ’s inability to meaningfully resolve a crisis that has persisted for over 70 years.

Security Council members today expressed their alarm with the escalating tensions and violence plaguing the occupied Palestinian territories as a top United Nations envoy laid out the troubling trends that are undermining prospects for a peaceful two-State resolution of the conflict.

Ahead of the Group of Seven (G7) ministerial meeting on global food security, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) today appealed for $1.2 billion to meet urgent needs of 8 million children at risk of death from severe wasting.

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks to the Ad Hoc Committee of the General Assembly for the Announcement of Voluntary Contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), in New York today:

The United Nations Children’s Fund is providing emergency relief in Bangladesh to people stranded by recent floods — including 1.6 million children — and is dispatching, among other things, 400,000 water purification tablets for 80,000 households and emergency medical supplies for district health facilities.

The Houthis movement — also known as Ansar Allah — have signed an action plan with the United Nations to end and prevent the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict, the killing and maiming of boys and girls, attacks on schools and hospitals and other grave violations.  Virginia Gamba, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, signed the action plan as a witness in New York.

The United Nations Palestinian Rights Committee will organize a virtual event on the margins of the sixty-sixth session of the Commission on the Status of Women on “Impact of forced displacement on Palestinian women” on 23 March from 10 a.m. to noon, via WebEx.

In a Security Council meeting on the Middle East peace process today, delegates urged Israel to scrap its plan to evict Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem, arguing that it would undercut prospects for a two-State solution.