UNITED NATIONS, October 24. /TASS/. Israel’s force operation in the Gaza Strip is risking to trigger a larger conflict that may go beyond the region’s limits, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said on Tuesday.
"Israel’s potential force action in Gaza with the use of the methods we are seeing now: with the most blatant violations of international humanitarian law, mass deaths of civilians, is threatening to trigger a more large-scale conflict that may embrace the entire region and even go beyond its borders. We want to believe that no one of the Security Council members are interested in this," he said during open debates on the situation in the Middle East at the United Nations Security Council.
However, in his words, the United States’ latest steps make one doubt that it doesn’t want the conflict expansion. "Having vetoed the Brazil-initiated humanitarian draft resolution, which was scoring necessary support, the US delegation is seeking to push through another draft, which is overfilled with politicized, inappropriate and extremely dubious provisions. In a bid to make it easier for the US allies in the Security Council to swallow the ‘bitter pill,’ the authors stuffed it with a random set of humanitarian measures Israel may take in the course of its ground operation. And they did their best to avoid anything in the draft that could hamper West Jerusalem to carry it out," Nebenzya explained.
He recalled that the history of the Middle East unequivocally shows that "violence triggers bigger violence and this vicious circle must be broken," the Russian diplomat stressed, adding that a set of humanitarian requirements to the conflicting parties, with a ceasefire being the key one, could be a basis for the UNSC collective position on the developments around the Gaza Strip.