The Palestinian delegate to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, appealed to the organization's Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday to exert more effort to prevent Israel from committing a "crime against humanity," after Israel gave nearly half of the population of the Gaza Strip 24 hours to evacuate their homes as it plans to launch a ground assault. Mansour told reporters before a meeting of the Arab Group's delegates at the UN: "He needs to do more. Everything that has been done is not enough. We all need to do more to prevent this crime against humanity."
Some countries urged Israel on Friday to halt the attack on northern Gaza, where over a million civilians defied Israeli evacuation orders before the pursuit of Hamas militants who killed Israeli civilians earlier in the week. Israel's envoy to the UN, Gilad Erdan, stated that the evacuation warning aims to "temporarily move (people) south to mitigate the harm to civilians." He made these remarks during an event at the United Nations with families of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas.
Guterres made comments behind closed doors to the 15-member Security Council on Friday. He told reporters as he was heading to the meeting that the situation in Gaza has reached an "unprecedented dangerous level," adding that he is in constant contact with regional leaders to try to "prevent further serious escalation in the West Bank or anywhere else in the region, especially in southern Lebanon." In reminding the parties, Guterres stated, "Even wars have rules. Civilians must be protected and never used as shields."
