UN chief: Settlement expansion in West Bank raising ‘specter of ethnic cleansing’; onslaught on Gaza ‘unlike anything I’ve witnessed’

The expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank is damaging the prospect of peace between the Israelis and Palestinians while raising the “specter of ethnic cleansing,” warns UN chief Antonio Guterres.

“Violence, displacement and settlement expansion by Israel in the occupied West Bank are bulldozing the path to peace and raising the specter of ethnic cleansing. We cannot allow the two-state solution to disappear before our eyes,” he says while opening the UN’s signature diplomatic gathering in New York.

“It is nearly three years since the abhorrent terror attacks by Hamas on seventh of October,” he also says. “But what followed was an onslaught on Palestinians in Gaza with a scale of killing and destruction unlike anything I’ve witnessed in my years as secretary-general.”