GENEVA: The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Tuesday deplored the conflict in Gaza as a “moral failure” of the international community and urged Israel and Hamas to reach a new deal to halt the fighting.
“I have been speaking of moral failure because every day this continues is a day more where the international community hasn’t proven capable of ending such high levels of suffering and this will have an impact on generations not only in Gaza,” ICRC president Mirjana Spoljaric told journalists in Geneva following trips to the Gaza Strip and Israel.
“There’s nothing without an agreement by the two sides, so we urge them to keep negotiating...” she said, referring to the release of Israeli hostages taken to Gaza by Hamas gunmen during their deadly rampage in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
A truce mediated by Qatar and Egypt held for a week at the end of November and brought about the release of 110 hostages in Gaza in exchange for 240 Palestinian women and teenagers from Israeli jails.
Heavy fighting resumed on Dec. 1 and some of the remaining hostages have been declared dead in absentia by Israeli authorities.
Although the ICRC facilitated the release of hostages during the truce, the group has been criticized by some Israelis for not doing more to free others and provide them with medical care. Some social media users have equated it to a taxi service to drive hostages out of Gaza.
“You don’t just go there and take the hostages and bring them out,” Spoljaric said, saying that any analogy with an Uber or taxi service was “unacceptable and outrageous.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to confirm last week that new negotiations were under way to recover hostages still held by Hamas, after a source said Israel’s intelligence chief met the prime minister of Qatar.
“We continue to talk to all sides to then be ready to operationalize the agreement that they reach,” Spoljaric said.
“What is clear is that at the current level of hostilities, a meaningful humanitarian response remains extremely difficult, if not impossible,” she said.
Her remarks come as the 160-year-old Swiss-based ICRC releases a new four-year strategy after narrowly avoiding a liquidity crisis this year amid surging humanitarian needs.
The organization is cutting around 4,000 posts this year and next to reduce costs, Spoljaric said, but remained committed to its core role as an impartial go-between for warring parties.
Under the new strategy, spending will rise in 2024 in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, Sudan, Burkina Faso and Haiti due to growing violence there, but fall in Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan and South Sudan, a spokesperson said.
Gaza war is world’s ‘moral failure’, Red Cross chief says
https://arab.news/4eaaz
Gaza war is world’s ‘moral failure’, Red Cross chief says
- “There’s nothing without an agreement by the two sides, so we urge them to keep negotiating...” ICRC president Mirjana Spoljaric told journalists
- “You don’t just go there and take the hostages and bring them out“
UNESCO fears for fate of historical sites during Iran war
- “UNESCO is deeply concerned by the first impact that the hostilities are already having on many world heritage sites,” Assomo said
- Tehran’s Golestan palace, damaged in US–Israeli strikes, is testimony to the grandeur of Iran’s civilization in the 19th century
PARIS: UNESCO said it is deeply concerned about the fate of world heritage sites in Iran and across the region, after Tehran’s Golestan palace, often compared to Versailles, and a historic mosque and palace in Isfahan were damaged in the war.
The United Nations’ cultural agency on Wednesday urged all parties to protect the region’s outstanding cultural sites, saying four of Iran’s 29 world heritage sites had been damaged since the start of the US and Israeli war with Iran.
“UNESCO is deeply concerned by the first impact that the hostilities are already having on many world heritage sites,” Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of the World Heritage Center, told Reuters, adding he was also concerned for sites in Israel, Lebanon and across the Middle East.
Tehran’s Golestan palace, damaged in US–Israeli strikes, is testimony to the grandeur of Iran’s civilization in the 19th century, he said.
The palace was chosen as the Persian royal residence and seat of power by the Qajar family and shows the introduction of European styles in Persian arts, according to the UNESCO website. The last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, held a coronation ceremony there in 1969.
“We sometimes even compare it with the Versailles Palace in France, for instance, and it has suffered, unfortunately, some damage. We don’t know the extent for the moment. But clearly, with the images that we have been able to receive, we can confirm ... it has been affected,” Eloundou Assomo said.
Photos of the interior of the palace have shown piles of smashed glass and shards of wood on the floor, and shattered woodwork.
Isfahan was one of Central Asia’s most important cities and a key point on the Silk Road trading route. Its Masjed-e Jame (Jameh Mosque) is more than 1,000 years old and shows the development of Islamic art through 12 centuries.
Buildings close to the buffer zone of the prehistoric sites of the Khorramabad Valley have also been damaged, UNESCO said.
UNESCO has shared coordinates of key cultural sites to all parties, Eloundou Assomo said, and was monitoring damage.
“We are calling for the protection of all sites of cultural significance ... everything that tells the history of all the civilizations of the 18 countries in the region,” he said.
