Statement by Representative of Slovenia to the UN Security Council Ambassador Samuel Žbogar at the briefing on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question

Thank you Mr. President.

As this is the first time, I want to wish you all the success for your Presidency. I also welcome the new members of the Council and I am looking forward to working with them.

I thank the President for convening this meeting today and I also want to thank the briefers for their presentations. It is very appropriate to start the New Year with today’s briefing as a way of reality check for the Council.

Colleagues,

Briefings of the Security Council are not an end in itself. They have a purpose. For the Security Council to reflect on the facts heard, to establish how much they threaten peace, security and wellbeing of the civilian population, and to take action accordingly.

Last year, we spent many hours discussing the catastrophic situation in Gaza. Each of the briefings was more devastating, more brutal, more apocalyptic.

We learnt that the health community in Gaza coined a new term: wounded child, no surviving family. We were briefed about doctors performing amputations without anesthesia, including on children. We discussed the heartbreaking phone calls between emergency call operators and six year old Hind, later found dead together with paramedics.

We had no lack of established facts about the situation on the ground.

We spent many more hours, days, weeks, months trying to find a united Council voice, too many times without success for proper Council’s action.

We start this year with news of babies arriving to hospital dead on arrival. They froze to death.

The messages from Dr. Haj-Hassan are touching us all but they should not come as a surprise.

What each of these briefings keeps telling us is that everything needed to sustain human life is under attack in Gaza.

The hands of the Security Council seem to be tied but these briefings and SOS messages are a reminder of why we cannot give up and need to keep trying for this Council to live up to its name and its responsibilities.

Mr. President,

Slovenia underlines that Israel as the occupying power has the legal responsibility to ensure and maintain the provision of medical services, public health and hygiene.

We are therefore appalled by the findings of the OHCHR report on the attacks on hospitals during the escalation of hostilities in Gaza. While we followed numerous attacks on and operations in major healthcare facilities, the report as well as High Commissioner Türk today, highlight a pattern of similar attacks on hospitals by the IDF. It also addresses allegations regarding violations of protected status of hospitals and medical personnel.

We are appalled that trauma injuries have not received life-saving assistance, that risks of preventable maternal and child mortality have grown, and access to chronic disease treatments has been lost. Infrastructure vital to public health, including entire water and sanitation system have been systematically dismantled as confirmed today by WHO representative Dr. Peeperkorn. Medical evacuations have been restricted and so have the essential medical supplies and basic items. Hospitals have been sieged. Medicals workers attacked, many losing their lives while saving others. The work of UNRWA, the main provider of health care services in Gaza, has been challenged. The list goes on.

Now, the director of Kamal Adwan hospital is detained after months of repeated attacks and last week’s raid which rendered the hospital out of service and patients left for themselves. We call for his release. We call for ICRC to get access to the detainees in Israeli detention centers, as well as for ensuring that hospitals in North Gaza can become functional again.

We also continue calling for immediate release of hostages. We are deeply alarmed over the information about an attempted suicide.

Polio vaccination campaign showed that there is a way, when there is a collective will. But there doesn’t seem to be a will of the occupying power to save civilians in Gaza. On the contrary, with a sense of impunity for their continuous destruction of Gaza, there doesn’t seem to be any humanity left in Gaza, neither for Palestinians nor for hostages.

Mr. President,

Hospitals are not and should not be a battleground. It is against the law. We underline the moral and legal imperative of respecting the protected status of hospitals, the wounded and sick, the medical staff and their means of transport and equipment. In this regard, we deplore violations and call for full respect of international law, including Security Council resolutions. They must be actively protected and never attacked, nor used for military purposes.

Already in October 2023, Slovenia called for an independent, full, prompt and effective investigation of the attack on Al Ahli hospital. Today we support High Commissioner Türk’s call for independent, credible and transparent investigations of the attacks and incidents on healthcare, including during hospital sieges, leading to full accountability.

There is no convincing argument for this war on Palestinians in Gaza to continue. We continue to call for implementation of all Security Council resolutions. We call for unconditional release of all hostages and we call for immediate and unconditional ceasefire. And we agree, Dr. Haj-Hassan, “enough is enough.”

Thank you.

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