‘War in Gaza must stop now’: France’s ambassador to UN
France’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nicolas de Riviere, has called for the captives to be released, the resumption of humanitarian aid into Gaza and an immediate ceasefire.
Speaking at an emergency meeting at the UN Security Council regarding the ongoing Israeli conflicts, Riviere called the humanitarian situation in Gaza “catastrophic”.
“We can no longer accept that humanitarian tragedy as an inevitable fact. There needs to be an immediate permanency by the release of all hostages as well as the delivery at scale of humanitarian aid,” he said. “War in Gaza must stop now.”
Riviere said that France condemns the October 7 Hamas attack and will continue to work towards the implementation of a two-state solution.
“And we will continue to work on this task including within the Security Council. Measures aiming to weaken the Palestinian Authority must stop,” he said before turning to the war in Lebanon. “The humanitarian situation is worsening as a result of the intensification of Israeli strikes. There too we need to see an immediate ceasefire.”
US says it is pushing Israel for improvements on aid
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, says Israel must do more to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza and the US will push it to do so despite overwhelming evidence that Israel has been largely cutting off aid from northern Gaza.
“The United States will continue to make the following clear: Food and supplies must be surged into Gaza immediately, and there must be humanitarian pauses across Gaza to allow for vaccinations and the delivery and distribution of humanitarian aid,” she said.
“A policy of starvation in northern Gaza would be horrific and unacceptable and would have implications under international law and US law. The government of Israel has said this is not their policy, that food and other essential supplies will not be cut off, and we will be watching to see that Israel’s actions on the ground match this statement.”
The UNSC only ruled on that back in June, when are you going to implement resolution 2735
https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15723.doc.htm
Aid has only been going down since July. Highest avg was 156 trucks per day in July, with 500 a day before Oct 7, 800 a day needed now.
UK’s envoy to UN calls conditions in northern Gaza ‘harrowing’
Barbara Woodward calls the situation in northern Gaza “harrowing” and has named Israel as the culprit for cutting off access to food aid.
“In the first half of October, no food aid was delivered to northern Gaza with Israeli authorities denying or impeding the vast majority of humanitarian movements between north and south. We expect October to see the least aid enter Gaza since the beginning of the conflict, lower even than September,” she said.
“Israel must comply fully with international humanitarian law,” she added.
