China calls on int'l community to promote ceasefire in Gaza

United Nations, Dec 30: A Chinese envoy on called on the international community to promote a ceasefire in Gaza.

More than 80 days have passed since the outbreak of this round of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and more than 2 million innocent people in Gaza have been plunged into an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, said Geng Shuang, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Xinhua news agency reported.

This is in spite of the fact that both the UN General Assembly and the Security Council have respectively adopted a number of resolutions, strongly calling for a ceasefire, for an end to the collective punishment of innocent people of Gaza, and for compliance by the occupying power with international law and international humanitarian law, he said.

The international community must pull all its efforts to promote a ceasefire, mitigate the catastrophe, and save lives, he told the Security Council.

The protraction of the war will only cause more casualties on both sides, exacerbate the obstacles to humanitarian assistance, and undermine the prospects for a political settlement, he warned.

There is no safe place in Gaza and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, who have been repeatedly forced to move, have nowhere else to go, said Geng.

"China urges Israel to immediately cease its indiscriminate military attacks and collective punishment of the people of Gaza and to provide the necessary conditions for humanitarian agencies to carry out their assistance work in Gaza," he said.

The current humanitarian situation in Gaza is extremely dire, with life-saving supplies nearly exhausted, the medical system paralyzed, social order on the verge of collapse, tens of thousands of pregnant women facing the threat of extreme starvation and newborns being deprived of feeding because of their mother's malnutrition, he said.

China calls on all parties to effectively and fully implement Security Council Resolution 2720, which seeks to boost humanitarian assistance in Gaza. China looks forward to the early establishment of a mechanism to ensure the safe and unimpeded entry of adequate humanitarian supplies into Gaza, he added.

The crux of the protracted Palestinian-Israeli issue lies in the failure to implement the two-state solution and the failure to guarantee the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, he noted.

China calls for an international peace conference that is more broad-based and more effective, so as to expedite the formation of a timetable on the roadmap for the implementation of the two-state solution, Geng said, adding that China supports Palestine's full membership in the United Nations and the early resumption of direct negotiations between Palestine and Israel.