UAE warns US that time is running out to avoid wider Mid-East crisis
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
The US has refrained from demanding a halt to the Israeli offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 24,000 people.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
DUBAI - The United Arab Emirates urged the United States to support an immediate ceasefire of Israel’s war in Gaza. It warned that the risk of a regional conflagration is growing daily as the three-month long war rages on.
“We need a humanitarian ceasefire now, we can’t wait another 100 days,” the UAE Ambassador to the United Nations Lana Nusseibeh said in an online interview from New York. “The risks are high, the war in Gaza is very clearly an open wound, and it’s destabilising the region,” she said, adding that the US could play a critical role in easing the tensions.
The warning by one of Washington’s key allies in the region marks a new level of concern about the spiral of attacks involving Israel, Iran and its proxies and US forces. Fighting has dragged on in Gaza amid widespread destruction and a soaring civilian death toll.
The armed group Hamas killed 1,200 people and abducted 240 others in its Oct 7 attack
Since then, Israel has been engaged in a military offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 24,000 people. Most of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents have also been displaced.
In mid-December, the World Bank estimated Israeli bombardment had damaged or destroyed over 60 per cent of Gaza’s infrastructure.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has refrained from demanding a halt to the Israeli military campaign. It also vetoed a UN Security Council demand for a ceasefire
Israel’s far-right government has vowed to pursue its offensive and rejected a US-backed proposal by five Arab nations including the UAE for post-war Gaza reconstruction because it is conditional on Israeli support for a Palestinian state.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, there have been almost daily skirmishes on Israel’s border with Lebanon between Israeli forces and the militant group, Hezbollah.
Regional tensions have increased dramatically since late 2023 with Israel mounting a series of assassinations of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian commanders and Iran openly going on the offensive in its proxy war with Israel.
Iran on Jan 20 accused Israel of a deadly rocket attack on a building in the Syrian capital Damascus
The strike followed an attack by Iran earlier in the week on what Teheran said was an Israeli spy base in Iraq.
US Central Command also said multiple ballistic missiles and rockets were launched on Jan 20
While most of the missiles were intercepted, some impacted the base.
A number of US personnel are being evaluated for traumatic brain injuries and at least one Iraqi service member was wounded, according to a post on social media platform X.
Meanwhile, Houthi rebels in Yemen are disrupting global trade by attacking cargo ships moving goods across the Red Sea, despite US-led military punitive action.
Ms Nusseibeh said: “If the objective is not to increase extremism and terrorism in our region, this would be described as the case study for how not to do it.” BLOOMBERG
