The U.N. chief said Mon­day that the Unit­ed Na­tions has of­fered to

mon­i­tor any cease-fire in Gaza and de­mand­ed an end to the worst death and de­struc­tion he has seen in his more than sev­en-year tenure.

Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res said in an in­ter­view with The As­so­ci­at­ed Press that it’s “un­re­al­is­tic” to think the U.N. could play a role in Gaza’s fu­ture, ei­ther by ad­min­is­ter­ing the ter­ri­to­ry or pro­vid­ing a peace­keep­ing force, be­cause Is­rael is un­like­ly to ac­cept a U.N. role.

But he said “the U.N. will be avail­able to sup­port any cease-fire.” The Unit­ed Na­tions has had a mil­i­tary mon­i­tor­ing mis­sion in the Mid­dle East, known as UNTSO, since 1948, and he said, “from our side, this was one of the hy­pothe­ses that we’ve put on the ta­ble.”

“Of course, we’ll be ready to do what­ev­er the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty asked for us,” Guter­res said. “The ques­tion is whether the par­ties would ac­cept it, and in par­tic­u­lar whether Is­rael would ac­cept it.”

Is­rael’s mil­i­tary as­sault on Gaza, trig­gered by Hamas’ at­tacks in south­ern Is­rael on Oct. 7, has stretched for 11 months, with re­cent cease-fire talks fail­ing to reach a break­through and vi­o­lence in the West Bank reach­ing new highs.

Stress­ing the ur­gency of a cease-fire now, Guter­res said: “The lev­el of suf­fer­ing we are wit­ness­ing in Gaza is un­prece­dent­ed in my man­date as sec­re­tary-gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Na­tions. I’ve nev­er seen such a lev­el of death and de­struc­tion as we are see­ing in Gaza in the last few months.”

The war has killed over 40,900 Pales­tini­ans, ac­cord­ing to Gaza’s Health Min­istry, which does not dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween fight­ers and civil­ians in its count. The war has caused vast de­struc­tion and dis­placed around 90% of Gaza’s pop­u­la­tion of 2.3 mil­lion, of­ten mul­ti­ple times.

Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu and his gov­ern­ment have ac­cused the U.N. of be­ing an­ti-Is­rael and have been high­ly crit­i­cal of U.N. hu­man­i­tar­i­an op­er­a­tions in Gaza. Fac­ing protests at home and in­creas­ing ur­gency from al­lies, Ne­tanyahu has pushed back against pres­sure for a cease-fire deal and de­clared that “no one will preach to me.”

Look­ing be­yond a cease-fire, Guter­res stressed that a two-state so­lu­tion to the decades-old Is­raeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict is not on­ly vi­able, “it’s the on­ly so­lu­tion.”

The Unit­ed States and oth­ers sup­port Pales­tin­ian state­hood, but Ne­tanyahu, who is lead­ing the most con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment in Is­rael’s his­to­ry, has op­posed calls for a two-state so­lu­tion.

Guter­res asked rhetor­i­cal­ly whether the al­ter­na­tive is vi­able.

“It means that you have 5 mil­lion Pales­tini­ans liv­ing there with­out any rights in a state,” he said. “Is it pos­si­ble? Can we ac­cept an idea sim­i­lar to what we had in South Africa in the past?”

He was re­fer­ring to South Africa’s apartheid sys­tem from 1948 un­til the ear­ly 1990s when its mi­nor­i­ty white pop­u­la­tion mar­gin­al­ized and seg­re­gat­ed peo­ple of col­or, es­pe­cial­ly Black peo­ple.

“I do not think you can have two peo­ples liv­ing to­geth­er if they are not in a ba­sis of equal­i­ty, and if they are not in a ba­sis of re­spect — mu­tu­al re­spect of their rights,” Guter­res said. “So the two-state so­lu­tion is, in my opin­ion, a must if we want to have peace in the Mid­dle East.” —UNIT­ED NA­TIONS (AP)

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Sto­ry by EDITH M. LED­ER­ER | As­so­ci­at­ed Press