New York, USA.- United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday demanded an end to Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, while condemning “terrorism” amid renewed violence in the West Bank.
“Each new settlement is another obstacle on the road to peace,” he told the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.
“All settlement activity is illegal under international law. It must stop. Incitement to violence is a dead end. Nothing justifies terrorism.”
This committee, created in 1975, met at the United Nations headquarters in New York when 10 Palestinians, including a child under the age of 16, were killed and more than 100 wounded by gunshots during an Israeli military incursion in Nablus, a recurring scenario. of fighting in the northern occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian Authority.
It is the deadliest Israeli incursion into the West Bank since at least 2005, matched only by the Jan. 26 raid on Jenin, also in the northern West Bank, during which 10 Palestinians were killed by Palestinian troops.
Guterres considered that the situation “in the occupied Palestinian territory is the most explosive in years” in a context of a “blocked” Israeli-Palestinian “peace process”.
“Our immediate priority must be to prevent further escalation, reduce tensions and restore calm,” said the Secretary General in the presence of the Palestinian Ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour.
