SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

APLN member C. Uday Bhaskar warns that the ceasefire demand risks becoming a political footnote and council members should organise a humanitarian task force and evolve a plan to implement the spirit of the resolution.

If the Security Council’s ceasefire resolution is allowed to flounder and remain a political homily, the major powers (the US, Russia and China) would be guilty of remaining inside their insular security envelopes while Palestinians face a dire threat where their right to exist is being endangered by Netanyahu’s intransigence.

The most urgent need is for humanitarian aid to reach Gaza and the starving Palestinians trapped in different locations. Within the Security Council, the three permanent members of China, France and Britain and the three non-permanent members of Algeria, Japan and South Korea ought to form a cluster of like-minded nations to put together a humanitarian task force under the aegis of the UN and evolve a plan to implement the spirit of the ceasefire resolution.

The inability to reach a meaningful major power consensus to deal with the unrelenting Israeli military action in Gaza will add to regional instability in the Islamic world and sow the seeds of an extended period of resentment, which might fuel extreme acts of retribution and revenge. The October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the recent Islamic State attack in Moscow are illustrative.

The full article can be accessed on the SCMP website here.

Image: iStock/Yuliia Bukovska