United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addressed the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, nearly three years after the October 7 massacre, sharply criticizing Israel’s subsequent military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
“It is nearly three years since the abhorrent terror attacks by Hamas on 7 October," Guterres said, “but what followed was an onslaught on Palestinians in Gaza with a scale of killing and destruction unlike anything I have witnessed in my years as Secretary-General," falsely implying that the Gaza war had a higher death toll than the wars in the Congo, Sudan, and Syria, which have seen hundreds of thousands of people killed, and millions in the case of the Congo.
Guterres cited proceedings at the International Court of Justice, noting that the court has issued legally binding provisional measures in the case concerning the application of the Genocide Convention in the Gaza Strip.
He also referred to an advisory opinion issued by the court last year, saying that the United Nations must be permitted to carry out its mandates in Gaza and that UN staff and humanitarian personnel must be protected.
“All parties must comply with international law and the Court’s orders," the Secretary-General stated.
Guterres then turned to the situation in Judea and Samaria, which he referred to as the “occupied West Bank," and warned that Israeli policies there were undermining prospects for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict.
“Meanwhile, violence, displacement and settlement expansion by Israel in the occupied West Bank are bulldozing the path to peace and raising the specter of ethnic cleansing," he said, ignoring the violence emanating from the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria.
Concluding this portion of his remarks, Guterres called for the preservation of the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
“We cannot allow the two-state solution to disappear before our eyes," he said.