UN Chief: Statehood For Palestinians Is A Right, Not A Reward

(MENAFN- Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) NEW YORK, Sept 22 (KUNA) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday reaffirmed that "statehood for the Palestinians is a right, not a reward."
Guterres made his remarks in New York at an international conference on Palestine and the two-state solution, emphasizing the failure of diplomacy and UN resolutions, adding "let's have no illusions, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has gone unresolved for generations."
Guterres also slammed Israel's occupation continued illegal settlements in the Palestinian West Bank, calling them "morally, legally, and politically intolerable."
Guterres began by thanking France and Saudi Arabia for organizing the event, but expressed "disappointment" over the US denying Palestinian officials the "opportunity to be fully represented" at this week's UN General Assembly and related gatherings, referring to its denying them visas.
Decrying the rapid deterioration of the "intolerable" situation in the Gaza Strip, Guterres said: "International law has been breached. Decades of diplomacy have come up short."
Noting the need for a two-state solution, the UN chief welcomed more member states' recent recognition of the state of Palestine.
While condemning the events of Oct. 7, 2023, Guterres further stressed that "nothing can justify collective punishment of the Palestinian people or any form of ethnic cleansing."
He later, listed off the atrocities since then, he mentioned "the systematic decimation of Gaza, the starvation of the population, the killing of tens of thousands of civilians, most of them women and children, and hundreds of our own humanitarians." (end)
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