The Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterreshas made an exceptional appeal to the president of the UN Security Council to “press to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip, in addition to repeating its call for a ceasefire.

Thus, and for the first in his mandate, which began in 2017, Guterres has invoked article 99 of the UN Charterwhich establishes that the Secretary General “may draw the attention of the Council to any issue that in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of peace and security in the world.”

“I urge the members of the Security Council to pressure to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe. I reiterate my call for a humanitarian ceasefire to be declared. It is urgent. The civilian population must be saved from further harm,” the Secretary General stressed in a letter published by the UN.

Guterres has explained his decision to invoke the aforementioned article “given the magnitude of loss of human life in Israel in such a short period”when two months have passed since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas following the October 7 attacks, in which Hamas killed more than 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 240 hostages in Israeli territory. Since then, Israeli strikes have killed more than 16,200 people in Gaza, where some 7,000 are under rubble.

Israel charges against Guterres and the EU supports him

In response, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen has taken a further step in his campaign against Guterres and has asserted that his mandate means “a danger to world peace”. “Your request for him to activate Article 99 and the call for a ceasefire in Gaza constitutes a support for the terrorist organization Hamas and support for the murder of the elderly, the kidnapping of babies and the rape of women,” Cohen said on his social networks.

The representative of Israeli diplomacy has assured that anyone who supports peace in the world must “support the liberation of Gaza from Hamas”, an argument with which the Israeli Army justifies its offensive against the Palestinian enclave.

The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdán, also accused Guterres this Wednesday of having reached “a new level of moral turpitude”. “The secretary general’s ceasefire call is actually a call to maintain Hamas’ reign of terror in Gaza,” Erdan wrote in X.

However, the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrellhas called on members of the European Union and its partners in the UN Security Council to support Guterres’ call.

“I call on EU members of the UN Security Council and like-minded partners to support Guterres’ call. “The Security Council must act immediately to prevent a total collapse of the humanitarian situation in Gaza,” he said in X. “I also call on Israel to allow all UN Agencies, including its humanitarian coordinator, Lynn Hastings, to provide urgent support to civilians in Gaza,” Borrell added.