{"id":248936,"date":"2021-03-25T16:32:38","date_gmt":"2021-03-25T20:32:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/?post_type=document&p=248936"},"modified":"2021-03-31T16:44:16","modified_gmt":"2021-03-31T20:44:16","slug":"special-coordinator-wenneslands-security-council-briefing-25-march-2021-daily-press-briefing-excerpts","status":"publish","type":"document","link":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/document\/special-coordinator-wenneslands-security-council-briefing-25-march-2021-daily-press-briefing-excerpts\/","title":{"rendered":"Special Coordinator Wennesland’s Security Council Briefing \u2013 25 March 2021 Daily Press Briefing \u2013 (Excerpts)"},"content":{"rendered":"
25 MARCH 2021<\/strong><\/h6>\n

The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today\u2019s noon briefing by Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General.<\/p>\n

\/…<\/p>\n

**Middle East<\/u><\/p>\n

Tor Wennesland, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process,\u00a0briefed<\/a>\u00a0the members of the Security Council by VTC<\/a> this morning.\u00a0 He said that we have witnessed a spike in demolitions and seizures of Palestinian-owned structures, which include internationally funded humanitarian projects.\u00a0 Mr.\u00a0Wennesland urged Israel to cease demolitions and evictions, in line with its obligations under international humanitarian law, and to approve plans that would enable these communities to build legally and address their development needs.\u00a0 He added that COVID-19 continues to have a devastating effect on Palestinians.\u00a0 In addition to the brutal impact on public health, the recurrent lockdowns, school closures and reduction of commercial activity have severely undermined living conditions.\u00a0 The Special Coordinator said that support to the Palestinian COVID-19 response should be significantly enhanced to ensure that Palestinians receive a fair and timely share in the distribution of vaccines.\u00a0 Mr.\u00a0Wennesland said he is deeply concerned by the daily violence that continues to fuel mistrust and drives us further from a peaceful resolution of the conflict.\u00a0 He is particularly concerned that children are so often the victims.\u00a0 Children should never be the target of violence by any party, nor be exposed to violence, he said.<\/p>\n

\/…<\/p>\n

Question<\/u>:\u00a0 Thank you, Farhan.\u00a0 I was listening to the briefing of the\u2026 of Mr.\u00a0Wennesland, and I have two questions.\u00a0 First, when he was talking about the provocative statements by officials from both sides, he gave three examples from Palestinians and\u2026 very harsh examples, and he gave one mild statement from an Israeli member of the Knesset, which is\u2026 that is very unfair.\u00a0 And I want to ask him through you why he did that.\u00a0 And I can give him 20\u00a0statements, especially during elections, that targeting the Palestinians, dehumanising the Palestinians, threatening the Palestinians of ethnic cleansing, et cetera.\u00a0 So, that is one question.\u00a0 The second question, when he uses the word “in response” to that Israel conducted a raid in Gaza, which ended up with eight injured Palestinians, “in response”, what does that mean, “in response”? \u00a0Isn’t occupation itself a reason for a Palestinian to resist occupation? \u00a0Why Israel “in response” that is he just\u2026 he is giving a justification to the Israelis to commit these atrocities against civilians.\u00a0 Why is that\u00a0 I need an answer for these two statements he gave.<\/p>\n

Deputy Spokesman<\/u>:\u00a0 The answer to both questions is the same, that Mr.\u00a0Wennesland uses his best judgement in terms of determining what information to put into his briefings to the Security Council and how best to portray it, and we have confidence in his selection of material and the words that he uses.\u00a0 Ultimately, dealing with parties is always a series of judgement calls about how you present different matters, and it is his role, as a professional diplomat, to weigh all the various factors in doing that, and we simply trust his judgement on that.<\/p>\n

\/…<\/p>\n

For information media. Not an official record.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

25 MARCH 2021 The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today\u2019s noon briefing by Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General. \/… **Middle East Tor Wennesland, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process,\u00a0briefed\u00a0the members of the Security Council by VTC this morning.\u00a0 He said that we have witnessed a spike in demolitions […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"template-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"country":[897,1593],"document-category":[2573],"document-source":[5352,6169,1877],"committee-meeting":[],"document-subject":[2005,2029,1857,2021,6245],"entity":[1729],"document-language":[],"class_list":["post-248936","document","type-document","status-publish","hentry","country-israel","country-palestine-state-of","document-category-highlights-of-the-noon-briefing","document-source-secretary-general","document-source-united-nations-department-of-global-communications","document-source-united-nations-special-coordinator-for-the-middle-east-peace-process-unsco","document-subject-gaza-strip","document-subject-house-demolitions","document-subject-incidents","document-subject-incursions","document-subject-violence","entity-united-nations-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/248936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/document"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/248936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=248936"},{"taxonomy":"document-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-category?post=248936"},{"taxonomy":"document-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-source?post=248936"},{"taxonomy":"committee-meeting","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/committee-meeting?post=248936"},{"taxonomy":"document-subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-subject?post=248936"},{"taxonomy":"entity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entity?post=248936"},{"taxonomy":"document-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-language?post=248936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}