NEW YORK CITY: With hostilities between the Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel on the brink of all-out war, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that world cannot permit Lebanon to become another Gaza. He expressed these remarks during an exclusive interview with Arab News.
The pager and walkie-talkie explosions across Lebanon last week, which left around 37 dead and over 3,000 wounded, and which were followed by further exchanges of fire across the border, have also raised regional tensions to breaking point.
Hezbollah-Israel Conflict
The UN Chief said an all-out conflict between Hezbollah and Israel “is something we need to evade at all costs.” He said that they should take measures to stop this war and war in the Gaza Strip.
He was speaking ahead of the high-level week of the UN’s 79th General Assembly, which are going to be held as the war in Gaza nears its grim one-year anniversary, the UN chief admitted that the war has exceeded his expectations in terms of destruction as well as suffering.
War on Gaza
When asked regarding the UN’s responsibility for the failure to end the conflict, he made it clear that the responsibility lies with those who started the conflict.
He added the UN has consistently called for truce and humanitarian help from the beginning of the conflicts, but said “it is impossible to convince those who do not want to be persuaded.”
Calling for a two-state solution to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he added that there was no humanitarian solution for humanitarian issues and solution was always political. “ Therefore, we need to stop the ongoing war,” he remarked.
US and Israel
Calling on Washington to stop supplying arms to Israel, meanwhile, is an exercise in uselessness, he added. “I simply know that that would not occur. It is not worth concentrating efforts where the outcome are impossible.”
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He was clear, however, on the need to implement all the discussion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which in January ruled there was a risk that genocide is being carried out in the Gaza Strip.
Asked whether he is in favor of issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the UN chief said he supports “all the verdicts of the ICC.”
