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'Assign same value to Israeli, Palestinian lives': UAE says civilians in Gaza cannot be abandoned
UN Security Council rejects US and Russian draft resolutions on Gaza, preventing a unified response to the crisis
People distribute food to people at a makeshift camp for displaced people in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 25, 2023, as battles between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement continue. Photo: AFP
The UAE has stressed that the United Nations Security Council must assign the same value to Palestinian life as it does to Israeli life.
"We cannot allow any equivocation on this point: there is no hierarchy of civilian lives," said Lana Nusseibeh, the UAE's Permanent Representative to the United Nations.
She was explaining the UAE's vote on the US and Russian draft resolutions on the war in Gaza. As the Israel-Hamas war rages on, the Security Council failed to adopt the competing resolutions, preventing a unified response to the crisis.
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Civilians in Gaza cannot be abandoned, stressed the Emirati envoy. "The security council must step up, as we have heard clearly from countless foreign ministers just yesterday, and that is the work the UAE will turn to now."
Referring to Israel's orders to evacuate more than one million people from northern to southern Gaza, Nusseibeh said: "We cannot be silent on the question of forced displacement and the evacuation order."
United Arab Emirates Ambassador to the UN Lana Zaki Nusseibeh addresses the Security Council. Photo: Reuters
The Gaza Strip is occupied territory, she said, adding that there "should be no ambiguity about that".
The ambassador reiterated that the world must meet the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people. "The UN and NGOs have been very clear: An immediate humanitarian ceasefire; the release of all hostages; safe, sustained, and at scale humanitarian access; fuel for hospitals and desalination plants; water; and adherence to international humanitarian law."
Rejecting calls for a ceasefire, Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas over its October 7 attack that killed 1,400 people. Israel's retaliatory airstrikes have claimed over 6,500 lives.
Last week, a Russian-led draft resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire was voted down. Similarly, the US vetoed a Brazilian-led text that urged humanitarian pauses to deliver aid to millions in the Gaza Strip.
The UAE has warned that the conflict could spread in the region as it noted growing tensions, including in southern Lebanon, the occupied Syrian Golan, and the Red Sea.
"An unchecked slide into regional war risks ominous outcomes that will not only put regional security at stake, but they could extend beyond to affect stability around the world," Reem Al Hashimy, Minister of State for International Cooperation, said at the UN on Tuesday.
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