UN Security Council meeting begins discussing Gaza war
The UNSC is meeting to discuss the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question.
Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory and deputy special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, is scheduled to speak first.
Gaza ‘sinking deeper in disaster’, occupied West Bank faces ‘unprecedented crisis’: UN official
Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory and deputy special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, has told the UNSC meeting that on his recent visit to Gaza, he “was stunned at the scale of the destruction and suffering”.
“I met humanitarian workers risking their lives to deliver aid while themselves living in intolerable conditions. I saw the immense personal toll on the population, including the UN’s own staff, but was also inspired by our staff’s unshakable commitment to do their work as they speak today,” he said via video-link from Jerusalem.
He said that over 22 months of war, “Gaza is sinking deeper in disaster, marked by rapidly mounting civilian casualties, mass displacement”, and that the captives held by armed groups “continue to languish in appalling conditions”.
Alakbarov also addressed Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank, where he said there is an “unprecedented crisis, relentless expansion of settlements, demolitions, [and] intensifying violence”.
‘The Gaza famine is here, an engineered famine, a predicted famine, a man-made famine’: Save the Children
Inger Ashing, CEO of Save the Children International, has also told the UN Security Council that the NGO’s clinics in Gaza “are overwhelmed by need, every bench packed with malnourished children and their mothers, yet our clinics are almost silent now. Children do not have the strength to speak or even cry out in agony.”
“They lie there, emaciated, quite literally wasting away – their tiny bodies overcome by hunger and disease, the medical and specialised nutrition supplies they need all but used up,” she said.
“A few kilometres away stand ready a sea of supplies, thousands upon thousands of truckloads of lifesaving items, all blocked,” she said.
“These past few weeks, more and more children have shared that they wish to be dead. One child wrote, ‘I wish I were in heaven, where my mother is. In heaven, there is love. There is food and water.'”
A two-year-old Palestinian is held by her mother at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza
I remember these kind of pictures from my youth, 1985 famine in Etheopia.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/08/13/g-s1-82265/in-1985-famine-led-to-live-aid-and-a-u-s-alert-plan-trump-froze-it-now-its-back
In the summer of 1985, images of emaciated children in Ethiopia shocked the world and prompted one of the biggest charity concerts ever: Live Aid. Megastars like Paul McCartney, Lionel Richie, Madonna and Queen took to the stage in London and Philadelphia. Tina Turner and Mick Jagger wowed an audience that numbered over a billion people watching in person and on broadcast. Altogether, the event raised well over $100 million for famine relief in Africa.
Celebrities weren't the only ones responding to the famine — the U.S. government did as well.
