Middle East is being reshaped, but Palestine faces ‘existential threat’, warns UN chief

Guterres says annexation of occupied West Bank by Israel would be ‘a most serious violation of international law’

Israeli settlers and soldiers at the site of a shooting in the occupied West Bank town of Hawara. EPA

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The Middle East is being reshaped but it is unclear what will emerge next, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Monday as he highlighted the uncertainty surrounding the future of Palestine.

He told a high-level UN Security Council meeting that the region was “in a period of profound transformation – rife with uncertainty, but also possibility”.

“We have a responsibility to help make sure the people of the Middle East come out of this turbulent period with peace, dignity and a horizon of hope grounded in action,” Mr Guterres added.

He expressed particular concern about an “existential threat” to Gaza and the occupied West Bank. A total or partial annexation of the West Bank by Israel “would constitute a most serious violation of international law”, he warned. Mr Guterres pointed out that senior Israeli officials have discussed the possibility of formally annexing parts of the West Bank in the near future.

“Israeli administrative changes over the past two years have streamlined and accelerated the settlement approval process,” he said. “As a result, control over many aspects of planning and daily life in Area C of the West Bank has been transferred to Israeli civilian authorities.”

Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a settler, said recently that 2025 would be “the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria”, referring to the name Israel uses for the West Bank.

The Palestine Authority’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Varsen Aghabekian, said the rights of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem were being breached by Israel and settlers “without any accountability”.

She said Israeli authorities aimed to undermine the two-state solution and weaken the official institutions of the state of Palestine.

Ms Aghabekian reaffirmed the importance of unity and national identity under the “umbrella of the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation]”, which she described as the “only legitimate” representative of the Palestinian people.

“It also requires everyone to commit to the PLO political programme and international commitments and to work under one regime, one law and a single armed force,” she said.

Israel has maintained a firm position against allowing either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza after the war, describing either scenario as “a reward” for the attacks on October 7, 2023.

US deputy ambassador Dorothy Shea welcomed the Palestinian leadership’s recent statements emphasising how Hamas is placing the interests of Tehran over that of the Palestinian people and thereby bringing about the destruction in Gaza.

"We have an historic opportunity to dramatically transform the Middle East. It is long past time for the fighting to end and the work of building peace and security to begin," she said.