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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has condemned both the 7 October Hamas attacks and what he described as the “obliteration” of Gaza, including mass civilian casualties, starvation and destruction of infrastructure. Guterres was addressing the  High-Level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution that is being convened at the UN Headquarters in New York between 28 and 30 July. The UN chief urged world leaders to ensure the conference becomes a turning point for irreversible progress toward a two-State solution, calling it the only credible path to peace based on international law. Mandated by the General Assembly of the UN, the meeting features plenaries, working groups and interventions from senior UN officials and Member States.

The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, is the world’s most senior civil servant. His words, especially in the last year, have been tense, terse and delivered with a sense of urgency, as he tries to convey to world statesmen, and the world public, the need for urgent, large-scale action to deal with the global problems that seem to be overwhelming the world body. The challenges are enormous, and the response, if it is to be effective, has to be proportionate in size and scope.