UN chief Antonio Guterres, in an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, said that the US must put more pressure on Israel to end its war on Gaza as the violence on the ground raged on yesterday.
The message conveyed by Guterres to the US in the interview with Al Jazeera is that it must intervene, Tamer Qarmout, professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, said.
Guterres said the US being “the only superpower that is enabling Israel to continue its war through funding weapons, arms and providing diplomatic protection,” he said.
“The message is loud and clear: the US has to intervene”, Qarmout quoted the UN chief as saying. “The US administration has been enabling this war to continue for too long.”
However, Guterres acknowledged that the demand is very unlikely to be heard.
“I know the American political life sufficiently to know that will not happen,” Guterres said.
The UN chief said it is, however, important to keep pressuring the US and make it clear that “the two-state solution must not be undermined”.
Meanwhile, medical sources in Gaza yesterday confirmed at least 16 Palestinians’ death in Israeli attacks since the early hours of the morning.
This number includes five members of the same family who, according to the Palestinian Civil Defence, were killed in an attack on al-Mawasi in south Gaza this morning. It said two children were among those killed.
Meanwhile, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus yesterday reiterated his “call for a ceasefire, which is critical for rebuilding the health system to cope with escalating needs” in Gaza.
He said on X: “Amid the ongoing hostilities, it is critical to ensure access to all essential health services, including rehabilitation to prevent illness and death.”
In the Al-Jazeera interview, Guterres laid bare his helplessness in stopping the war.
“I have no power to stop the war. We have a voice, and that voice has been loud and clear to say from the beginning this war must stop. The suffering of the Palestinian people must stop and the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people must be recognised.”
Accusing the Security Council of “systematic failure” in ending the most dramatic conflicts that we face today, the UN chief said, “The geopolitical divide that exists among the major powers has created a situation in which any country or any movement anywhere in the world feels that they can do whatever they want because there will be no punishment.”
“We must absolutely reject any prospective annexation of West Bank or the land grabbing or the illegal settlements that move on. The West Bank together with Gaza and East Jerusalem, which is part of the West Bank, must be the state of Palestine in the future,” he added.
Meanwhile, one of two US aircraft carrier strike groups deployed to the Middle East in part to deter Iran from carrying out a threatened attack against Israel has departed the region, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
The decision to end the dual-carrier presence came nearly three weeks after US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group to remain in the Middle East, even after the arrival of the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to replace it.
The Roosevelt has now departed the Middle East and is headed to the Asia-Pacific region, Major General Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, told a news briefing.
In West Bank, the families of Palestinians killed in an air strike in the occupied West Bank city of Tubas held funerals yesterday after Israeli forces withdrew following their latest raid in the territory.
The Israeli military said in a statement on Wednesday that its forces were engaged in a “counter-terrorism operation” in the area of Tubas, in the northern West Bank.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said the military withdrew Thursday evening, allowing the funerals to go ahead.
The four men buried in Tubas yesterday were killed in an air strike at dawn on Wednesday, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said.
A fifth fatality from the same strike was buried on Friday in Tamoun, also in the northern West Bank.
Since the Israeli offensive in Gaza began on October, more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces. It also wounded more than 92,000 people.
According to the Palestinian health ministry, at least 679 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israeli military or settlers since October 7.
