envoy

NEW YORK: Israel’s “decades-long ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinian people “has reached its height through the commission of genocide,” Palestine’s permanent observer to the UN told the Security Council on Tuesday.

Riyad Mansour cited a string of statements by senior Israeli officials that amount to open declarations of a plan to forcibly remove Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.

In a five-page letter to Security Council President Jerome Bonnafont, Mansour said Israeli officials “are proudly declaring their ethnic cleansing plan, enunciating their decades-long policy to remove the Palestinian people from their land, and rapidly and actively implementing their crimes on the ground.”

The letter, seen by Arab News, quotes Defense Minister Israel Katz telling an interviewer on Sept. 2 that “there’s no real solution for Gaza in the end without migration,” and that Israel is “organized and prepared to get them out — by sea, by air, by every way possible.”

Katz said “the plan hasn’t been cancelled; it’s being discussed all the time, even now, and I think there’s no other solution for everyone’s good.”

He added that “today, 70 percent of Gaza’s territory is a desert thanks to what the Israeli army has done; there are no longer any inhabitants or houses there,” and that Israeli forces have “reoccupied the refugee camps in the West Bank and expelled 40,000 Palestinians.”

Katz denied the existence of Jewish settler violence, saying: “There is no Jewish terror. I have cancelled that term. Terrorism is committed by those who act against the State of Israel.”

On Sept. 7, he said he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had instructed the military “to prepare for the opening of a full-scale war” in the West Bank, including “the evacuation of residents from cities and villages … exactly as we did in the security zones in Gaza,” and announced plans for “targeted eliminations” of senior Palestinian Authority officials.

The letter cites Netanyahu filming himself at a military post in Gaza on Sept. 2 saying: “We are not withdrawing. We are staying on this line. We control 60 percent of the strip. And there is still more to come.”

The same day, it says, he visited a religious school in the city of Sderot and looked on as young settlers chanted: “And we will take vengeance, one eye for the two eyes of Palestine, may its name be erased.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir unveiled a plan on Sept. 3 called “Disengagement 710,” which he said would “encourage the voluntary migration of 1.86 million Gazans within seven years.”

He said 250,000 Palestinians would be removed from Gaza in the first year and a million within three years, adding: “It is possible. It is realistic. It is in our hands. It is within our ability.”

Ben-Gvir said a survey found that “76 percent of Israeli society support encouraging immigration from Gaza.”

The letter references a video generated by artificial intelligence that Ben-Gvir posted showing Palestinian detainees entering what it described as a slaughterhouse-style conveyor system, and a separate video of him telling women detainees: “The good conditions in the prisons are over … I’m glad we lowered these conditions to the bare minimum.”

The letter links this rhetoric to reports of Israeli soldiers marking Palestinian detainees with numbers on their bodies, including a case in which a man identified as Ahmad Al-Hathnawi was released with the number 44 written on his forehead. The Israeli military acknowledged the practise, saying “lessons have been learned.”

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also holds a ministerial post within the Defense Ministry overseeing settlement policy, announced a new settlement near Bethlehem on Sept. 3 and said: “We want to bring a million settlers.”

He repeated the assertion that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people,” and on Sept. 7 said the PA “should be brought down,” declaring that the Oslo Accords are “null and void anyways.”

Israel’s Chief Rabbi David Yosef told a crowd on Aug. 22 that Palestinians “are not a people” and “have no rights here.” The crowd responded: “Amen. May the Holy One, blessed be He, destroy all of Gaza.”

The letter documents the “infrastructure of ethnic cleansing” on the ground, saying Israeli forces demolished the village of Khirbet Al-Tabban in the past week, displacing more than 70 people and bringing to 47 the number of Palestinian communities erased since October 2023.

It says Israeli settlers and soldiers killed teenagers Omar Al-Nassan, 17, and Khalil Abu Alia, 16, in the village of Al-Mughayyir the same day Israel’s president told CNN that his country was making a “major effort” to curb settler violence.

Citing a UN report issued on Sept. 4, Mansour said Israeli forces “killed civilians, destroyed hundreds of homes … and went door to door forcing residents to leave” in the Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarm refugee camps, and displaced families “were told by Israeli officers there would be no more refugee camps and that they should all go to Jordan.” More than 40,000 Palestinians remain displaced from the camps, the letter says.

In Gaza, 2.3 million people, including a million children, remain confined to less than a third of the territory’s area, with 1.9 million displaced and two-thirds of households living in tents.

More than 30,000 tents are being held at border crossings against a need for 130,000 before winter, and roughly two-thirds of Gaza’s population face crisis-level food insecurity or worse.

More than 30 Palestinians were killed in Gaza between Aug. 28 and Sept. 7, including 8-year-old Wafaa Akila and her father.

They were killed as he drove her to school, bringing to more than 270 the number of children killed since the ceasefire was announced.

Mansour welcomed recent moves by Britain, France, Canada, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Norway and Belgium to restrict settlement products and sanction those financing the settlement enterprise, as well as similar steps under consideration in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Poland, Portugal and Sweden.

He called on the Security Council to go further, urging states to halt arms transfers, close diplomatic missions in Jerusalem, and impose travel bans and asset freezes.

“Action, not statements, will help the Palestinian people to survive Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign,” Mansour wrote, calling it “the most organized, methodic, and broadcasted ethnic cleansing campaign in modern history.”

The letter is the 892nd that Palestine has sent to the Security Council on the situation since September 2000, according to the Palestinian mission to the UN.

NEW YORK CITY: The UN secretary-general’s personal envoy for Sudan, Pekka Haavisto, joined fellow “Quintet” mediators in Khartoum on Tuesday for a round of talks aimed at reviving an inclusive political process that can end the conflict in Sudan, the UN said.

The Quintet group — comprising the African Union, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the League of Arab States, the EU and the UN — held what Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, described as a “good offices mission” to hear an assessment by Sudanese stakeholders of the political and security situation in the country, and to share reflections on efforts to advance peace.

The envoys met at the Sudanese Foreign Ministry before engaging with representatives of UN agencies, Dujarric told reporters in New York. Next, they will meet Sudanese political and civilian representatives, followed by further engagements, he said.

Sudan has been locked in a civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and rival paramilitary faction the Rapid Support Forces since April 2023.

Haavisto arrived in Khartoum on Friday and held a series of meetings with the chairman of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council, the prime minister, the foreign minister and senior government officials, as well as other political leaders and representatives of civil society, Dujarric said.

Haavisto’s talks over the weekend focused on “practical measures to advance deescalation and the protection of civilians,” Dujarric added. He also raised the issue of the release and exchange of detainees, and stressed the importance of a single national examination process for all Sudanese schoolchildren.

Haavisto called for an inclusive political process alongside concrete steps to reduce violence in the country, insisting that a negotiated settlement remained “the only viable path” toward a comprehensive ceasefire agreement and a sustainable end to the conflict.

The envoy is expected to remain in Sudan until the end of this week.

Strikes resume in Russia and Ukraine after a three-day pause during US envoys’ visits to the countries’ capitals.

Russia has struck Kyiv after a three-day pause in attacks on the Ukrainian and Russian capitals expired, following a visit by two US envoys that yielded no tangible progress towards peace.

Two residential buildings were damaged by Russian air raids early on Tuesday, city officials in Kyiv said. Drones hit buildings in the capital city as well as in the Boryspil and Fastiv districts on the outskirts of Kyiv, according to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine.

An air raid alert, published by the Kyiv city military administration, urged residents to take shelter due to the threat of an “enemy” drone attack.

Following the reported attacks in Ukraine, Russian regional Governor Roman Busargin said a Ukrainian drone attack injured several people after hitting civilian infrastructure in Saratov, nearly 1000km from Moscow. The number of casualties from both incidents remains unconfirmed (621 miles).

Russia and Ukraine pledged to halt strikes on each other’s capitals for three days as Washington dispatched envoys to Moscow and Kyiv. However, fighting continued elsewhere.

Attacks paused after leaders Vladimir Putin of Russia and Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine announced the ceasefire during the visits by US President Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, to Moscow and Kyiv over the weekend.

Russia’s state news agency TASS confirmed that the three-day suspension Putin had ordered for his forces expired on Monday evening local time.

Witkoff and Kushner held talks with officials in Moscow and Kyiv regarding ending the conflict. Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov called the more than three-hour meeting in Moscow on Saturday “highly useful”.

After talks with Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, Witkoff said: “We’ve had a very meaningful discussion, substantive, important, and we are very encouraged, and we look forward to continuing this as long as it takes.”

Witkoff also raised the prospects of reviving three-way negotiations to end the war.

A White House official told the Reuters news agency that the next steps regarding the war, which Russia began with a full-scale invasion of its neighbour in February 2022, would be announced in the coming weeks.