GENEVA: The United Nations stressed on Monday the urgent need for ceasefires in both Lebanon and Gaza to avert a wider regional conflict that could have far-reaching global consequences.
Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said that a sustained ceasefire supported by meaningful peace negotiations was the only solution to end the escalating violence.
“A ceasefire that is sustained by a meaningful peace process is the only way to break the cycle of violence, of hatred, of misery,” Grandi said, speaking at the opening of the UNHCR refugee agency’s annual executive committee meeting in Geneva.
He emphasized that without a ceasefire, the risk of a “major regional war with global implications” looms large.
Grandi’s remarks come as Israeli airstrikes continue in Lebanon, with over 1,300 deaths and more than a million people displaced since the violence escalated in late September, according to Lebanese officials.
Since October last year, Hezbollah and Israel have been involved in near-daily cross-border fire exchange. The conflict has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes on both sides of the border.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently vowed to neutralize Hezbollah, declaring that the offensive would allow displaced Israelis to return home.
Grandi, who recently returned from a visit to Lebanon and neighboring Syria, spoke of the immense suffering and displacement caused by the war. He condemned the indiscriminate Israeli attacks on civilians and criticized the lack of distinction between combatants and non-combatants.
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“Once again, the distinction made between civilians and combatants has almost become meaningless,” he lamented.
The UN refugee chief also highlighted the increasing dangers faced by humanitarian workers operating in conflict zones. He paid tribute to two UNHCR staff members who were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon last month and noted that 226 UNRWA workers have been killed in Gaza over the past year.
“We cannot accept that lives of humanitarians are dismissed as mere collateral damage, or worse, maligned as somehow culpable or complicit,” Grandi said.
Grandi expressed concern for the Syrian refugees who had initially fled to Lebanon seeking safety from their country’s war, only to be uprooted once again by Israeli airstrikes. Many Syrians, along with Lebanese civilians, have since crossed back into Syria, with UNHCR estimating that 276,000 people have fled Lebanon, 70% of whom are Syrian nationals.
Lebanese authorities, however, have reported a higher number, stating that over 400,000 people have crossed the border since the start of the violence.
