Jul 27. () –
The United Kingdom’s permanent representative to the UN, Barbara Woodward, has demanded this Friday the urgent increase of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip and has denounced the levels of violence reached by the settlers in the West Bank settlements, advocating diplomacy as the only solution to the conflict in the Middle East.
“We call for an immediate ceasefire, the immediate release of all hostages and an immediate increase in aid to Gaza,” Woodward said at the UN Security Council meeting on Gaza, where he urged both sides to accept the agreement approved by the Council.
The British representative insisted that the Gazan population “urgently needs a drastic improvement in the humanitarian situation” while “mediation efforts continue.”
Woodward has stressed the need to protect designated civilian areas, stressing the need for “functioning hospitals and essential supplies like water and electricity after nine months of devastation.”
Specifically, London has expressed “deep concern” about the latest Israeli incursions into the Khan Yunis and Al Mawasi camps, “where around 1.5 million people are sheltering”, as well as “by the stories of women and children living in unsanitary conditions and the spread of disease”.
The United Kingdom’s representative to the United Nations has therefore called on all parties to fully comply with international humanitarian law and on Hamas to release all hostages immediately.
The UN has also called on the international community to “fully cooperate with humanitarian and United Nations teams (…), to grant visa and equipment requests, and to open all aid routes into Gaza, including the reopening of the Rafah crossing.”
“There is an urgent need to address the deterioration of law and order so that aid can reach people safely,” Woodward added, adding that “settlement expansion in the West Bank and settler violence have reached unprecedented levels.”
“The Israeli government has seized more land this year than in the past twenty years combined. This is unacceptable: it contradicts multiple resolutions of this Council and undermines the viability of a two-state solution,” he added.
For the United Kingdom, the only way out of this cycle of violence and suffering is diplomatic, and the goal is to achieve, through a “commitment to a renewed peace process (…), a two-state solution, with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state.”
“We are committed to giving the people of the West Bank and Gaza the political prospect of a credible path to a Palestinian state and a new future. And it must be irreversible,” the British representative said.
Add Comment