Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - Calls are growing for a swift international response to the situation in the Middle East, as Israel continues to build new settlements in the occupied West Bank with increased military actions against civilians.

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - International aid organizations, including the United Nations humanitarian agency in Palestine, are calling for the immediate implementation of the Security Council resolution passed late Thursday demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. “The Council must ensure that the words in the resolution must quickly translate into meaningful change,” said Nicole Widdersheim of Oxfam International.

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - Disappointed with the Security Council’s inaction regarding the worsening situation in Gaza, diplomats from numerous nations of the global South are close to taking the case of Israeli aggression to the United Nations General Assembly. “It seems like they will wait for another day or two about what happens at the Security Council. If the Council does not take any action, they will be going to the General Assembly soon,” a diplomatic source told IPS on condition of anonymity.

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - International aid groups, including several United Nations agencies, are warning of a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza if Israel does not stop its military action there immediately. “The consequences of [further] military action by Israel would be disastrous,” said Jeremy Hobbs, director of Oxfam International, a London-based aid organization that is providing food and water for Palestinians affected by the Israeli blockade. Hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza depend on Oxfam and other international aid agencies for the basics of life — clean water, food and sanitation. Before the recent Israeli bombing campaign, Gaza had been cut off from the outside world for 19 months.

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - The United Nations Security Council is calling for intense international efforts to conclude diplomatic negotiations aimed at creating a peace treaty between Israel and Palestine. On Tuesday, the 15-member Council passed a unanimous resolution declaring its support for the negotiations initiated in the US city of Annapolis last year in November amid calls for both parties to refrain from any step that could undermine confidence.

UNITED NATIONS, 31 January (IPS) - A leading international human rights group is calling into question the findings of an Israeli inquiry into the Jewish state’s war with Lebanon in 2006. The London-based Amnesty International says the Israeli government-appointed Winograd Commission is “deeply flawed” because it fails to address the issue of war crimes against the civilian population in Lebanon.

UNITED NATIONS, 23 January (IPS) - Despite intensifying calls for international pressure to address the fast deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip, observers and some diplomats say the UN Security Council has proved as ineffective as it has been for many years concerning issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On Tuesday, the Council called an emergency meeting during which a vast majority of delegates strongly condemned Israel’s blockade of the occupied Palestinian areas and charged that it was violating international humanitarian law.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 15 (IPS) - The United Nations has come under strong criticism from one of its own top human rights officials for failing to take effective action to check the ongoing Israeli abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories. Expressing his anger and frustration at the fast-deteriorating human rights situation in Gaza and the West Bank, John Dugard, the UN special rapporteur on human rights for the Palestinian territories since 2001, has suggested that the world body quit the Middle East Quartet.