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Saudi Arabia welcomes UN Security Council resolution for Gaza ceasefire

More than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip, while millions have been internally displaced, say health officials in the Hamas-ruled enclave. (AFP)
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Updated 11 June 2024
Arab News
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Saudi Arabia welcomes UN Security Council resolution for Gaza ceasefire

  • Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Palestinian Authority also welcome latest development
  • Jordan also issues statement welcoming ceasefire plan for besieged enclave
Updated 11 June 2024
Arab News

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia, through a Ministry of Foreign Affairs ministry statement, has welcome to the UN Security Council’s adoption of the US draft resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Saudi Arabia, in its statement, “stressed the importance of the commitment of all parties to the crisis to end the protracted war, reiterating its full support for all international efforts to reach a sustainable ceasefire and resolve the Palestinian issue in accordance with international resolutions in a way that contributes to the stability of the region and supports the achievement of international peace and security.”

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, its ally the Islamic Jihad group and the rival Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas’s welcomed a UN Security Council resolution backing a proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza.

“The Palestinian president considers the adoption of this resolution a step in the right direction to end the war of genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip,” Abbas’s office said in a statement.

In its statement, Hamas said it was ready to cooperate with mediators over implementing the principles of the plan.

Hamas earlier on Monday said it was only willing to accept a deal that would secure an end to the war in Gaza while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was determined to pursue war against Hamas.

“Hamas welcomes what is included in the Security Council resolution that affirmed the permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the complete withdrawal, the prisoners’ exchange, the reconstruction, the return of the displaced to their areas of residence, the rejection of any demographic change or reduction in the area of the Gaza Strip, and the delivery of needed aid to our people in the Strip,” the militant group said in a statement.

 

Kuwait also commended the resolution, which called for the return of the forcibly displaced Palestinians and securing the return of humanitarian relief aid into Gaza.

A foreign affairs ministry statement affirmed that the adoption of the resolution “was a crucial and pivotal step towards ending the Israeli systematic aggression on the Gaza Strip and Palestinian civilians, adding that the international community must take responsibility to ensure the implementation of the decision.”

Jordan also welcomed the UN Security Council’s adoption of the resolution, and in a foreign affairs ministry statement, stressed ‘the importance of implementing this decision.’

Israel must “comply with the rules of international law and international humanitarian law and to stop its senseless war on the Gaza Strip, whose people are suffering from an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe as a result of the ongoing Israeli aggression against it since the seventh of last October,” foreign affairs ministry spokesman Sufyan Al-Qudah said in the statement.

Al-Qudah also reiterated the importance of launching a reconstruction process in Gaza “within the framework of a comprehensive plan to implement the two-state solution, which embodies an independent, sovereign Palestinian state along the lines of June 4, 1967, with occupied Jerusalem as its capital.”

Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi, the Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council, meanwhile said that the adoption of the US-proposed Israel-Gaza ceasefire plan “will contribute to ending the crisis in Gaza Strip and achieving security and stability in the region and the world.”

He said that GCC countries “welcome all regional and international efforts to end the crisis in a way that ensures the security and peace of our Palestinian brothers”, and expressed appreciation for the US efforts in this context.

Dr. Saleh bin Hamad Al-Tuwaijri, the Secretary-General of the Arab Red Crescent and Red Cross Organization, in a statement also welcomed the resolution, saying the ceasefire will “to lead to an end to the loss of lives” and “pave the way for the return of the displaced to their original homes within the Strip.”

He also appealed to the international community to intensify humanitarian and development assistance for Gaza Strip residents that have been displaced by the war.

US President Joe Biden outlined the truce accord last month and it envisions a ceasefire in stages, ultimately leading to a permanent end to the war. But Israel has said it will agree only to temporary pauses until Hamas is defeated, while Hamas has countered it will not accept a deal that does not guarantee the war will end.

With the conflict in its ninth month, the plan got further backing on Monday from the United Nations where 14 members of the Security Council adopted a US-drafted resolution in favor of the proposal while Russia abstained.

Separately, the Islamic Jihad said early on Tuesday that it looks “positively” to what the resolution included, “especially in terms of opening the door to reaching a comprehensive cessation of aggression and a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces” from the Gaza Strip.

Hamas also said it was willing to engage in indirect negotiations over implementing the principles “that are consistent with the demands of our people and resistance.”

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Presidency welcomed the resolution saying the presidency “is with any resolution that calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and preserves Palestinian land unity.”

More than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s eight-month-old assault on the Gaza Strip, say health officials in the Hamas-ruled enclave. The war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and abducting some 250 others, according to Israeli tallies.

Topics: War on Gaza Israel Gaza Hamas UN Security Council Palestinian Authority

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Iraq’s dreams of wheat independence dashed by water crisis 

Updated 16 December 2025
Reuters
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Iraq’s dreams of wheat independence dashed by water crisis 

  • Iraq ranks fifth globally for climate risk
  • Average temperatures in Iraq have risen nearly half a degree Celsius per decade since 2000
Updated 16 December 2025
Reuters

NAJAF: Iraqi wheat farmer Ma’an Al-Fatlawi has long depended on the nearby Euphrates River to feed his fields near the city of Najaf. But this year, those waters, which made the Fertile Crescent a cradle of ancient civilization 10,000 years ago, are drying up, and he sees few options.
“Drilling wells is not successful in our land, because the water is saline,” Al-Fatlawi said, as he stood by an irrigation canal near his parched fields awaiting the release of his allotted water supply.
A push by Iraq — historically among the Middle East’s biggest wheat importers — to guarantee food security by ensuring wheat production covers the country’s needs has led to three successive annual surpluses of the staple grain.
But those hard-won advances are now under threat as the driest year in modern history and record-low water levels in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers have reduced planting and could slash the harvest by up to 50 percent this season.
“Iraq is facing one of the most severe droughts that has been observed in decades,” the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Iraq representative Salah El Hajj Hassan told Reuters.

VULNERABLE TO NATURE AND NEIGHBOURS
The crisis is laying bare Iraq’s vulnerability.
A largely desert nation, Iraq ranks fifth globally for climate risk, according to the UN’s Global Environment Outlook. Average temperatures in Iraq have risen nearly half a degree Celsius per decade since 2000 and could climb by up to 5.6 C by the end of the century compared to the period before industrialization, according to the International Energy Agency. Rainfall is projected to decline.
But Iraq is also at the mercy of its neighbors for 70 percent of its water supply. And Turkiye and Iran have been using upstream dams to take a greater share of the region’s shared resource.
The FAO says the diminishing amount of water that has trickled down to Iraq is the biggest factor behind the current crisis, which has forced Baghdad to introduce rationing.
Iraq’s water reserves have plunged from 60 billion cubic meters in 2020 to less than 4 billion today, said El Hajj Hassan, who expects wheat production this season to drop by 30 percent to 50 percent.
“Rain-fed and irrigated agriculture are directly affected nationwide,” he said.

EFFORTS TO END IMPORT DEPENDENCE UNDER THREAT
To wean the country off its dependence on imports, Iraq’s government has in recent years paid for high-yield seeds and inputs, promoted modern irrigation and desert farming to expand cultivation, and subsidised grain purchases to offer farmers more than double global wheat prices.
It is a plan that, though expensive, has boosted strategic wheat reserves to over 6 million metric tons in some seasons, overwhelming Iraq’s silo capacity. The government, which purchased around 5.1 million tons of the 2025 harvest, said in September that those reserves could meet up to a year of demand.
Others, however, including Harry Istepanian — a water expert and founder of Iraq Climate Change Center — now expect imports to rise again, putting the country at greater risk of higher food prices with knock-on effects for trade and government budgets.
“Iraq’s water and food security crisis is no longer just an environmental problem; it has immediate economic and security spillovers,” Istepanian told Reuters.
A preliminary FAO forecast anticipates wheat import needs for the 2025/26 marketing year to increase to about 2.4 million tons.
Global wheat markets are currently oversupplied, offering cheaper options, but Iraq could once again face price volatility.
Iraq’s trade ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the likelihood of increased imports.
In response to the crisis, the ministry of agriculture capped river-irrigated wheat at 1 million dunams in the 2025/26 season — half last season’s level — and mandated modern irrigation techniques including drip and sprinkler systems to replace flood irrigation through open canals, which loses water through evaporation and seepage.
A dunam is a measurement of area roughly equivalent to a quarter acre.
The ministry is allocating 3.5 million dunams in desert areas using groundwater. That too is contingent on the use of modern irrigation.
“The plan was implemented in two phases,” said Mahdi Dhamad Al-Qaisi, an adviser to the agriculture minister. “Both require modern irrigation.”
Rice cultivation, meanwhile, which is far more water-intensive than wheat, was banned nationwide.

RURAL LIVELIHOODS AT RISK
One ton of wheat production in Iraq requires about 1,100 cubic meters of water, said Ammar Abdul-Khaliq, head of the Wells and Groundwater Authority in southern Iraq. Pivoting to more dependence on wells to replace river water is risky.
“If water extraction continues without scientific study, groundwater reserves will decline,” he said.
Basra aquifers, he said, have already fallen by three to five meters.
Groundwater irrigation systems are also expensive due to the required infrastructure like sprinklers and concrete basins. That presents a further economic challenge to rural Iraqis, who make up around 30 percent of the population.
Some 170,000 people have already been displaced in rural areas due to water scarcity, the FAO’s El Hajj Hassan said.
“This is not a matter of only food security,” he said. “It’s worse when we look at it from the perspective of livelihoods.”
At his farm in Najaf, Al-Fatlawi is now experiencing that first-hand, having cut his wheat acreage to a fifth of its normal level this season and laid off all but two of his 10 workers.
“We rely on river water,” he said.

Topics: Iraq

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