• UN envoy urges quick action to avoid Israel-Palestinian war
The Arab League said yesterday it will no longer cooperate on any level with Guatemala because of the country’s decision to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The Cairo-based organization said it has abandoned a memorandum of understanding signed in 2013 and has severed relations with the Central American country. Guatemala moved its embassy to Jerusalem earlier this month, following the inauguration of the United States Embassy in disputed Jerusalem.
Guatemala was the first country to put its embassy in Jerusalem, in 1956. It moved the facility 24 years later to Tel Aviv, after the Israeli parliament declared Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital in contravention of a United Nations resolution. Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
Meanwhile, the United Nation’s Mideast envoy called yesterday for urgent action to avoid another Israeli-Palestinian war sparked by the violence in Gaza. Nikolay Mladenov told the U.N. Security Council that “Gaza is on the verge of collapse” and urgent action is also needed to relieve the suffering of its “increasingly desperate” people. Israeli-Palestinian relations are at their lowest point in years in the aftermath of the U.S. Embassy move to Jerusalem and bloodshed on the Gaza border, where Israeli fire has killed over 100 Palestinians during mass protests since March.
Mladenov said the people of Gaza have survived three “devastating conflicts” and have lived under Hamas control for over a decade “with crippling Israeli closures and with diminishing hopes for an end to the occupation and a political solution.”