UN Security Council fails to reach consensus on Israel-Palestine conflict

NEW YORK: The UN Security Council convened for an emergency session on the recent escalation in Israel and Gaza, but the meeting concluded without a unified statement or position. Ambassadors from the 15-nation council gathered for closed-door consultations, initiated by Malta and later supported by the UAE, to address the ongoing violence.

Security Council members did not reach a consensus during the meeting, which Chinese Ambassador Zhang Jun remarked as “unusual.”

Palestine’s permanent observer to the UN Riyad Mansour spoke to reporters outside the Security Council chamber and urged the international community not to allow Israel to persist in its current course of action. He called for encouragement to steer Israel towards a path of peace, emphasising that there exists an alternative to the current violence that benefits both Palestinians and Israelis.

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Mansour expressed his frustration, noting that international attention often arises only when Israelis are killed, while Palestinians have endured years of violence with limited global response. He stressed that the Palestinian people have chosen the peaceful route and appealed to the world to support this choice.

Israel’s permanent representative to the UN, Gilad Erdan, addressed the Security Council as well, characterising Hamas’s attacks as “Israel’s 9/11” and accusing the group of perpetrating “barbaric pogroms” and “documented war crimes.” Erdan called on the Security Council to unequivocally condemn Hamas and provide unwavering support to Israel in its self-defense efforts.

Erdan compared Hamas to terrorist organisations like Daesh and Al-Qaeda, asserting that diplomatic attempts to engage with Hamas have failed. He argued that it is time to dismantle Hamas’s infrastructure entirely to prevent future horrors and called for robust international backing of Israel in this endeavor.