Can the UN stop death and destruction in Gaza?

In a sobering conversation at the United Nations HQ, UN Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the mounting humanitarian crisis in Gaza. While declining to weigh in on genocide allegations—“I have no competence to declare or not genocide,” he says—Guterres does not hold back on the reality on the ground.

“The problem is not the name. The problem is the reality… the highest level of death and destruction that I’ve ever seen in my public life.”

Guterres calls for an immediate, permanent ceasefire, the unconditional release of hostages. full humanitarian access, and a renewed push for a two-state solution, which he says is the only viable path to peace “What’s happening today in Gaza is morally, politically, and legally intolerable.”

He warns that Israel's current path, and its stated willingness to live with greater global isolation, risks deepening regional instability: “[Benjamin Netanyahu] has the possibility to solve that problem… by recognizing that another people are in the same land and that other people also needs to have a state and to live.”

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