Powerful UN Security Council – like rest of world – ‘waiting for what Israel will do next’
At an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, the secretary-general said that de-escalation was imperative.
In a meeting that lasted nearly three hours, Iran and Israel both defended their actions. Lebanon called for the implementation of the 2006 UN Security Council resolution that demanded a demilitarised buffer zone in the country’s south.
Also, Israel’s foreign minister declared Secretary-General Antonio Guterres persona non grata, barring him from visiting Israel and accusing the secretary-general of being a supporter of Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran.
The secretary-general did not publicly respond to the ban but his spokesperson did.
As the meeting ended, Security Council members found themselves in the same position as much of the rest of the world – waiting for what Israel will do next.
Sarcasm detected, UNSC has become quite powerless.
UN plans to start second round of Gaza polio vaccinations in mid-October
United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the UN is making preparations to start a second round of polio vaccinations in Gaza later this month for some 640,000 children.
The first round of the polio vaccination campaign, which began on September 1, reached its target of immunising 90 percent of children under 10 years of age in the war-battered territory. The oral vaccines given in Gaza require a second dose to be administered within four weeks of the first.
Dujarric said on Wednesday that vitamin supplements will also be distributed during the second round of the vaccination campaign.
The World Health Organization announced in August that a Palestinian baby was partially paralysed by the type 2 poliovirus – the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
UN says Israel’s travel ban on secretary-general latest ‘attack’ on its staff
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Israel’s travel ban on Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is a “political statement” and the latest attack on the world body by the Israeli government.
Dujarric said Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz’s designation of Guterres as “persona non grata” in Israel is “one more attack on the United Nations’ staff that we’ve seen from the government of Israel”.
Katz earlier accused the secretary-general of being biased against Israel and claimed that Guterres had never condemned Hamas for the October 7 attacks on southern Israel.
Dujarric rejected that claim, noting that Guterres has repeatedly condemned the Hamas attacks, while also stressing that the UN still works with Israel “at the operational level and other levels”.
