Tor Wennesland remains in New York for conversations on just how to “chart a way out of this crisis and how we can do it with the parties on the ground”.
He informed reporters that “we know very well” what the obstacles are for this to take place politically, which have to relapse.
No ‘quick fix’
“I can see that there is a lining up in the region, in Europe and from the international community to see that happening. But, it’s not a quick fix, it’s not an easy one and it will take some very hard diplomatic work,” he claimed.
As the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Mr. Wennesland has “been on the road more or less permanently” because the Gaza dispute emerged on 7 October complying with the dangerous Hamas attack right into southerly Israel and the seizure of captives.
While in New York, he will certainly meet the UN Secretary-General and the 5 irreversible participants of the Security Council – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – prior to heading to Washington, D.C.
A ‘humanitarian nightmare’
The purpose is “to see how we get from where we are in the midst of a humanitarian nightmare and a total conflicted West Bank into a different course” with a political remedy, he claimed.
Meanwhile, he claimed the acting UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Jamie McGoldrick, is presently in Gaza in initiatives to develop crucial concerns for help shipment whenever an altruistic ceasefire remains in location.
Ongoing hostilities make it difficult for the UN to provide efficiently on the ground, “so that conflict needs a pause quickly”, claimed Mr. Wennesland.
While applauding polite initiatives by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, he recognized that a contract on an enduring ceasefire “will be incredibly difficult to set up” and “not a quick fix whatsoever”.
Crisis in Rafah
The envoy was talking simply hours after UN principal António Guterres advised Member States that any kind of Israeli armed forces activity in Rafah – the southerly city on the boundary with Egypt where numerous hundreds of Palestinians are currently protected – would certainly worsen the “humanitarian nightmare” in Gaza with “untold regional consequences”.
Asked concerning the scenario, Mr. Wennesland kept in mind that Rafah is presently the only entrance factor for help right into Gaza, highlighting this altruistic “perspective”, while the political “aspect” is likewise being attended to “proactively and intensively” in between Israel and Egypt.
Responding to an additional concern, he claimed “it’s hard to find words to say to the people in Gaza who have lost everything”, including that “it is very difficult to preach hope when you sit in a safe place to people that are sitting in the middle of what is hellish”.
He emphasized the need for the worldwide neighborhood to “put the necessary pressure on the points that would trigger change”, restating the phone call for a ceasefire which comes as an outcome of arrangement on an exchange of captives and detainees.