UN envoy: Without us in Gaza there will be war ‘in a couple of days’

Nickolay Mladenov claims the UN is staving off a new round of fighting, which he says is more important than rescuing Israeli hostages and getting back the bodies of killed IDF soldiers from Hamas.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The United Nations’ Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process said Wednesday that without the humanitarian aid the UN supplies to the Gaza Strip, war with Israel would quickly break out.

Speaking with Army Radio on the sidelines of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) Global Forum, which he addressed on Monday, Nikolay Mladenov warned, “If we stop the humanitarian aid, if we stop running the schools and hospitals and providing fuel, you will have a war in a couple of days.”

This is not something anyone wants, he added, speculating that the next round of fighting would be significantly more deadly than Operation Protective Edge.

Mladenov failed to mention that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza was the direct result of Hamas’s failed rule.

The terrorist organization has isolated itself not only from Israel, which imposed a blockade to prevent Hamas from smuggling into Gaza materials that could be used to attack Israel, but also Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, which have both sanctioned and blockaded Hamas-ruled Gaza.

“Nobody wants to see another war in Gaza,” Mlandenov said, without noting that Hamas’s belligerence had precipitated all of the previous conflicts between Israel and that Israel evacuated its military and all Jewish communities from the Strip in the summer of 2005.

“It would be much more devastating than in 2014. It would engage the region, and we can still do what we need to do to prevent that from happening.”

The doomsday scenario of a regional conflict did not play out in past three military clashes between Israel and Hamas over the past nine-and-a-half years.

However, he might have been referring to Iranian forces – with bases in Syria as well as controlling the Hezbollah terror organization in Lebanon with its huge arsenal of rockets – who may want to stir up more trouble now more than in the past.

Staving off a new round of fighting, Mladenov said, is of higher priority than helping bring closure to the families of Oren Shaul and Hadar Goldin, IDF soldiers who were killed during the Operation and whose bodies are being held as bargaining chips by Hamas, and the release of Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayeed, two Israeli civilians believed to be suffering from mental illness who had crossed into Gaza..

“To my great regret, our focus must be on preventing war and preventing a humanitarian disaster in Gaza,” he noted, apparently in that context, while expressing his belief that if the situation in the Strip improves, “we create a constituency, a basis through which to address all of these other issues.”

“If we stop talking to both the Israelis and the Palestinians, I assure you that the picture that will be presented of this conflict internationally will be far more difficult and far more biased,” he said.

2014 Gaza warAvera MengistuHadar GoldinHamasIsrael-Gaza borderMladenovOren Shaul