United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called for a “stop” to “illegal” Israeli colonization in the occupied Palestinian territories and condemned “terrorism” amid renewed violence in the West Bank.
“Each new settlement is another obstacle on the way to peace. All settlement activities are illegal under international law and must be stopped. At the same time, inciting violence is a dead end. Nothing justifies terrorism (which) must be rejected by all,” Antonio Guterres told the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.
A deadly raid in Nablus
Established in 1975, this committee met at the United Nations headquarters in New York when 10 Palestinians, including a 16-year-old boy, were killed during an Israeli military attack in Nablus and more than 80 others were injured by bullets and deadly clashes in the north of the occupied West Bank , according to the Palestinian Authority.
This is the deadliest attack on the West Bank since at least 2005, linked to that on January 26 in Jenin, also in the northern West Bank, which killed 10 Palestinians, including militants and a woman in her 60s.
Guterres judged that the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory was “the most volatile in years” with “tensions at their highest” in the context of a “stalled” Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.”