UN secretary-general urges urgent action to preserve two-state solution, demands cease-fire and humanitarian access to Gaza

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres told a ministerial-level meeting convened by the French presidency that the Middle East is at a “hinge point in history” and called on member states to take “irreversible action” to preserve a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

Guterres said the promise of a two-state solution “is at risk of dwindling to the point of disappearance” and warned that political commitment is farther from realization than at any time in recent decades. “The political commitment to this long standing goal is farther than it has ever been,” he said.

The secretary-general framed the current crisis around three linked realities: the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, escalating military operations and settlement activity in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem), and high levels of settler violence. He said the cease-fire in Gaza “had brought a glimmer of hope” but that those hopes were “cruelly extinguished with the shattering of the ceasefire on 18 March.”

Guterres provided casualty and access figures drawn from his address: since the breakdown…