U.N. Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov warned Tuesday that a future war in Gaza would be even more destructive than 2014's Operation Protective Edge and urged all sides to take the necessary steps to prevent an escalation.
Mladenov said he does not believe "anyone in Israel, the Palestinians, the Arabs, the world – is ready for another conflict in the Middle East."
"We have a common interest to avoid another war in Gaza because another war in Gaza will be more destructive than the war in 2014 [Operation Protective Edge] and will have regional implications," he told the Walla news website, adding that this was why the United Nations was focused on making sure "we can turn the corner and not get into a cycle of escalation which will lead us into a confrontation."
Asked if Israel was doing all it could to ease the humanitarian crisis in the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave, Mladenov noted that while more could be done with that respect, "what we've seen over the last few years and in particular in the last few months is very strong cooperation with Israel.
"We've seen an improvement in the permits of goods that can go in or out [of Gaza]. We still need to focus on more. And we are looking at some very, very critical projects that should help generate employment in Gaza and allow for an economy to develop. Of course, for all of that to happen, we need security and stability on the ground and we need to make sure the militant buildup on the ground is contained and ultimately stopped. In the long run, the way to guarantee that is to bring Gaza back under control of the legitimate Palestinian government [the Palestinian Authority] and that's the direction we should be heading."
As for Israel's demand that humanitarian assistance be contingent on the return of the two Israelis held captive by Hamas as well as the remains of two soldiers, Mladenov said, "Everybody needs to understand that every aspect of keeping the situation not just quiet but also creating hope for people is connected to everybody making concessions and certainly the issue of the Israeli soldiers, the bodies and the civilians who are held in Gaza, needs to be addressed.
"That's been made very clear by Israeli authorities and it is a humanitarian issue that obviously needs to be handled. But all of these elements now very quickly need to fall into place because otherwise a few months down the line, I'm afraid that we will face an escalation in Gaza which will unwillingly drag everybody into a confrontation although until the very end everybody will keep saying that they'd want a war in Gaza, not Israel, not Hamas, not Egypt, not the PA, not anyone. But we will end up in that environment and I want to prevent that and this is where our focus is right now."
Asked about proposed plans for an industrial zone in either Gaza or the Sinai Peninsula, Mladenov said, "Right now, we have so many challenges with the day-to-day game that I don't want to talk about the endgame because I think it's purely academic what the endgame is until we stabilize the situation on the ground. So that is why our focus is on these emergency measures and avoiding a confrontation.
"It is really an issue of making sure that the Palestinian government, the Israelis, the Egyptians, the United Nations talk more to each other and coordinate better on how we remove the obstacles that will inevitably appear and how we will deal with the challenges because we all have a shared interest, I believe, not to see war in Gaza and not to see a humanitarian deterioration," he said.
