The U.N.'s Middle East envoy said Tuesday that Israel and Hamas were "minutes away" from another "devastating confrontation" in Gaza on Saturday – a clash averted after U.N. and Egyptian diplomatic efforts got both sides to "step back from the brink."
Nickolay Mladenov warned that "unless we begin in earnest the crucial work required to change the current deteriorating dynamics, another explosion is almost a certainty."
He told the Security that he just returned from Gaza and "the situation is calming down although tensions remain," warning that he still "perilous" faceoff could lead to the fourth war in a decade between Hamas and Israel.
"Only through the repeated, collective efforts of all sides has another catastrophic escalation been averted over the past weeks," Mladenov said.
The latest flare-up followed months of near-weekly border riots organized by Hamas. Over 130 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli gunfire since the riots began March 30.
The protests were aimed at ending the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza, imposed after the terrorist group seized power of the coastal enclave in 2007 in a military coup. The measure has resulted in severe economic hardship in the territory.
Israel says it is defending its sovereign border and accuses Hamas of using the protests as a cover attempts to breach the border fence and carry out terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers.
Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon said incendiary kites sent across the border by Hamas have destroyed over 8,000 acres of forest, farmlands and nature reserves on the Israeli side of the border.
"That's half the size of Manhattan," he told the U.N.
He said it is time that the Security Council declares Hamas a terrorist organization like al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, saying it is "holding hostage the entire population of Gaza" and its goal is to destroy Israel.
Danon again urged Hamas to release two Israeli civilians and the bodies of two soldiers killed in 2014.
"One cannot demand humanitarian assistance for Gaza, which we support while refusing to ensure the basic humanitarian rights of returning our captives and our fallen," he said.
Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour said the "dire humanitarian situation has placed an explosive pressure on the infrastructure and caused loss of livelihood among the entire population of the Gaza Strip."
He accused Israel of persisting "with its willful killing of Palestinian civilians and disregard of human life," and said it is "imperative" that international protection be provided for Gaza's civilian population.
Israel also drew sharp criticism at the council's monthly Mideast meeting from many countries over last week's approval by its parliament of a bill defining it as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Mansour said the new law "has transformed a situation of de facto apartheid into a situation of apartheid by law."
Deputy Iranian Ambassador Eshagh Al Habib said the law means the legalization of "racism and apartheid, and ultimately, it means legitimizing exclusion, segregation and systemic inequality."
He recalled the General Assembly's 1975 resolution calling Zionism "a form of racism and racial discrimination" that was revoked in 1991. Nearly 30 years later, he said, "it is crystal clear that by doing so, the U.N. General Assembly has only emboldened Israel to legalize racism."
