The United Nations Special Envoy for the Middle East, Tor Wennesland, predicts that 2022 will be the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the United Nations began tracking fatalities in 2005.
The increased violence reinforces this prediction by Israeli forces against Palestinians in previous years.
At the UN Security Council meeting on Friday, October 28, Wennesland urged immediate action to defuse this explosive situation and efforts to renew negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
In his speech to the Security Council, Wennesland said that growing despair, anger, and tension had once again broken into a cycle of violence that would become increasingly difficult to control, and too many Palestinians have been killed and injured.
As reported by Middle East Monitor, Israeli troops have killed 32 Palestinians over the past month. Including six children and injured 311 people during demonstrations, clashes, attacks, and search and arrest operations.
According to the special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, the deteriorating situation in the West Bank and the current fragile situation is rooted in decades of violence between Palestinians and Israelis, the absence of negotiations between the two countries, and the failure to resolve essential issues that fueled the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Wennesland said his message to Palestinian officials and factions, Israeli officials, and the international community in recent weeks was clear.
Wennesland stressed that his priority is to work to calm the situation and reverse negative trends on the ground, stressing that the aim should be to empower and strengthen the Palestinian Authority and rebuild the political process.
On the other hand, to defuse the violent situation in the West Bank, Palestine’s representative to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, challenged the Security Council to take immediate action.
The Palestinian representative also challenged the UN Security Council to protect and promote the discourse of a two-state solution and possible legal action in the International Criminal Court (ICC) against the Israeli occupation.
Mansour stressed, if needed, there is a possibility of a Palestinian independence struggle for decades to come and further bloodshed.
