Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at a UNSC Briefing on the Situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian Question
Mr. President,
We welcome you as president, and we wish you every success in the course of Algeria’s presidency. We also welcome the newly elected members of the Security Council.
We support the initiative of the delegation of Algeria to convene today’s UNSC meeting to discuss the deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip amid the IDF military operation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), which has already been ongoing for over 15 months. We thank the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, the WHO representative for the OPT, Dr. Rick Peepercorn, for their briefings. And we wish to express our special gratitude to Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan for her heart-pounding testimony and for her courageous and frank account, which described, inter alia, the horror endured by medical personnel and patients, including children of Gaza. We are planning to request a separate UNSC meeting on this very topic – the children of Gaza, whereas our Western colleagues, unfortunately, prefer to ignore this issue, promoting instead more advantageous (for them) narratives.
Mr. President,
We are gravely concerned at Israel's continued shelling and bombardment of civilian objects in the Gaza Strip. Every day we receive reports from the north of Gaza that there are repeated air raids against refugee and IDP camps. Amid the hostilities and the blockade imposed by West Jerusalem, the enclave has become immersed in a genuine humanitarian catastrophe, which is compounded by large-scale hunger, outbreaks of communicable diseases and the total destruction of vital infrastructure. The number of refugees and people repeatedly displaced from one place to another runs into the millions. The UNRWA leadership forewarned about the “impending famine” in the Gaza Strip due to the insufficient humanitarian assistance.
Unfortunately, Israeli attacks way too often target medical facilities. Furthermore, we have every reason to believe that the Israeli troops, who are hell-bent on inflicting collective punishment on the Gazans, have been systematically and deliberately destroying the enclave's healthcare system, since bombings, shelling, cleansings and arson attacks against medical facilities have become commonplace.
For example, every day we receive alarming reports from Kamal Adwan, Al-Awda, and Indonesia hospitals, which since December 21 have essentially become targets for IDF military action. Residents of the besieged northern regions have long been in a de facto “trap,” but latest attacks, devastation, and orders to evacuate patients from these facilities have left them completely without medical care. Indonesia Hospital, which provided medical assistance to thousands of Gaza residents, has ceased to operate; half of Al-Awda Hospital has been destroyed; a host of Israeli attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital (which is the last major medical facility in the region) have rendered it completely nonoperational and put at risk the lives of 75,000 Palestinians. This inevitably gives rise to grave concern vis-à-vis the fate of those residents of Gaza who are counting on medical assistance.
Under these circumstances, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (who the other day, as we all remember, miraculously survived the Israeli air strike on Sanaa Airport in Yemen) announced that Gaza’s health sector is under serious threat and called on the Israeli authorities to cease attacks on medical facilities and to release the management and the medical personnel of Kamal Adwan Hospital, who were detained during the Israeli military operation. However, that call clearly fell on deaf ears in West Jerusalem. The only response Israel gave was the strike on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, which killed at least seven people and wounded dozens more.
The inhumane nature of Israel's actions, which are being perpetrated with Washington's unconditional support, becomes all the more evident given the fact that 14,000 people needed medical evacuation even before the latest attacks on hospitals in the north, among them were children, women and disabled. Where can people flee if they cannot do so physically? Or perhaps the Israeli authorities ensured medical evacuation and sent those patients to their country so that they could get treatment? No, unfortunately, we have not observed any such actions on the part of Israel, and we have not even seen any signals that West Jerusalem is willing to resolve these issues through cooperation with the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). On the contrary, the activities of humanitarian organizations working “on the ground” are being obstructed, there are movement restrictions and bans on the entry of humanitarian aid. On the whole, this is all geared towards the achievement of one single objective – namely, to cleanse the Gaza Strip of the maximum number of Palestinians residing there and to create unbearable living conditions for those who remain.
In that context, we note that we fully support the WHO's intention to deploy an urgent mission to the north of the enclave in order to transfer critically ill patients to the south of Gaza, where certain minimal conditions remain so far to provide the necessary medical assistance. We call upon the Israeli authorities to immediately cease hostilities and to provide for normal operation of those few medical facilities that are still capable of receiving patients – these are about 15 out of the 36 hospitals that used to be operational.
Distinguished Colleagues,
Hospitals must not become battlefields, they may not be used for military purposes, and medical workers need to have opportunities to unimpededly perform their civil, professional and moral duty. These are the core principles that lie at the very heart of modern international humanitarian law. What is taking place right now is an egregious violation of the methods and rules of warfare. And this must be put to an end. Peaceful civilians in conflict situations should be provided with food and the right to medical care. And, of course, parties to the conflict have an obligation to protect those who save lives, namely, health workers. As of now, 1,047 healthcare workers have already been murdered in Gaza – a shocking figure.
Mr. President,
We all understand that the ongoing suffering of civilians in the Gaza Strip will not stop at least until the end of IDF's ruthless military operation, which is being carried out without any consideration for the opinion of the entire international community. But there will hardly be any prerequisites for that as long as Washington provides political cover for Israel's actions, blocking any relevant steps and initiatives by the UN Security Council and feeding West Jerusalem with weapons that tend to kill civilians in the enclave. We are convinced that the members of the UN Security Council must not remain indifferent to this situation that is tarnishing the Council's reputation.
We must not give up trying to awaken the conscience of our American colleagues and make them understand that now it is extremely important to abandon all parochial unilateral schemes for Israel's reconciliation with its neighbors, as these schemes do not take into account the need for the Palestinian problem to be solved on the basis of an internationally-recognized legal framework agreed upon by the UN. What is also increasingly unseemly is the US tactic of dragging out time for the benefit of Israel and compelling the Council to support the Washington-mediated negotiations for a deal between Israel and Hamas, which have been unsuccessful for over six months.
As we all know very well, the authorities of West Jerusalem have time and again put forward more and more new conditions for reaching an agreement on a ceasefire and exchange of hostages, rejecting even the dubious scheme enshrined in UNSCR 2735. At the same time, the responsibility for derailing the deal is repeatedly pinned on Hamas. Even if the agreement is ultimately reached, it will not bring back to life thousands of Palestinians and those Israeli hostages who could have been saved six months ago. And the responsibility for their deaths lies, inter alia, with the outgoing Biden administration.
Mr. President,
Russia's position of principle on the Middle East settlement remains unchanged and it is in alignment with the will of the international community. We have consistently advocated and will continue to advocate an unconditional ceasefire, unfettered humanitarian access, the release of all hostages and forcibly detained persons, and the relaunch of the peace process on the internationally-recognized legal basis at the heart of which lies the principle of “two States for two peoples.” Naturally, the Israelis do have the right to ensure their own security, but the path to that goal lies exclusively through a comprehensive Middle East settlement and the realization of the Palestinians' legitimate right to have a state of their own within the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Thus, we will be able not only to achieve lasting peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis, but also eradicate the root causes of the violence that has already spiraled out far beyond the OPT, destabilizing the entire Middle East region.
Thank you.
