Israel launched the devastating onslaught against Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement launched a surprise attack, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, against the occupying entity.
“At the time of writing the Ministry of Health in Gaza is reporting that the Israeli war machine has killed nearly 6,000 Palestinians and wounded over 15,000 in Gaza, the overwhelming majority of them civilians. Over 2350 of these have been children. An estimated 1500 people are missing, presumed buried under the rubble, of which over 800 are children,” said the signatories of the letter, who are from Asia, the Americas, Africa, Europe and Australia, on Wednesday.
They added that in the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces had killed almost 100 Palestinians and wounded many more, “again the vast majority of them being civilians.”
“We are writing to you to request the UN's urgent intervention to bring about an end to the war crimes and atrocities being carried out by Israel in its onslaught on Gaza and the West Bank,” the signatories asked Guterres.
Spearheaded by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), the letter was signed, among others, by Professor Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, the head of the Iranian Academy of Persian Language and Literature, Professor Hamid Algar; Department of Persian and Islamic Studies, University of California Berkeley, USA, former UK’s Labour minister Clare Short, and other renowned academics including Professors Jeff Halper, Richard Falk and Ilan Pappe and Avi Shlaim.
The letter came just a day after Guterres was asked by Israel’s UN envoy to resign after he said the Hamas attack “did not happen in a vacuum” as he pointed in his address at the UN Security Council on Tuesday to “56 years of suffocating occupation” of Palestine by the Israeli regime.
Infuriated by Guterres’ remarks, Israel stopped issuing visas to UN officials on Wednesday.
“Due to his remarks, we will refuse to issue visas to UN representatives. We have already refused a visa for Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths,” said Israel’s ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan in an interview with Army Radio.
The signatories of the letter further emphasized that the occupying entity “has wantonly violated international law by targeting civilian infrastructure,” including, “residential buildings, schools, hospitals, ambulances, mosques, churches, supermarkets, roads full of fleeing people and food production plants.”
“It has also directly targeted gatherings of civilians as it did on 17/10/2023 when it bombed the grounds of the Baptist Hospital in Gaza where displaced residents were seeking refuge and when it bombed a convoy carrying civilians to the south of Gaza on 13/10/2023,” they added, stressing that the regime has also used internationally-banned white phosphorus in Gaza and Lebanon, citing multiple human rights groups.
Tel Aviv has also blocked water, food, and electricity to the densely-populated Gaza Strip, plunging the besieged territory into a humanitarian crisis. The regime has further ordered 1.1 million people in the north of Gaza to evacuate and move south of the blockaded territory.
“In light of the war crimes currently being perpetrated on the people of Gaza, what action do you intend to take to try and rein in the Israeli war machine? The UN was formed in the wake of World War 2 with the express purpose of upholding a rule-based world order and to prevent a repeat of the horrors of that conflict," the signatories said.
"That being the case how much longer is the organization going to stand by and watch as genocide unfolds before our very eyes?” they asked Guterres.
“We urge and expect you to rise to the need of the hour and spare no effort to help end this bloodbath by reining in Israel, establishing an immediate ceasefire and working to arrange the immediate delivery of humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip,” the letter further read.
The international figures stressed in their letter to the UN chief that “Unless Israel is stopped and held accountable for the crimes it is currently committing in Gaza and the West Bank it will continue to kill and maim with impunity and to make a mockery of international law.”
MNA/PressTV