Dubai: Sometimes tears are more eloquent than words, UNWRA spokesman Chris Gunness told Gulf News in an interview.
Gunness broke down in tears on Wednesday after a television interview appearance following an Israeli attack on a UN school in Gaza.
“The rights of Palestinians, and even their children, are wholesale denied ... and its appalling,” Gunness, spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), told Al Jazeera Arabic from Occupied Jerusalem.
The interviewer appears to thank him for appearing, upon which Gunness breaks down and weeps. The video has gone viral on social media. Gunness said he didn’t know that the network would share the video which he said was effectively a ‘private moment of grief’.
Watch the video below.
“My tears are irrelevant, but if they have focused attention on what is happening in Gaza then I am pleased,” he told Gulf News. “I think there are sometimes situations of such profound and burdensome human suffering that words crack and break under the burden of meaning and tears become more eloquent,” he said.
The emotional response by the official reflects the horror of what is happening in Gaza and the seemingly inability of anyone to stop it. More than 100 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday in the Gaza Strip, among them victims of Israeli fire on a crowded market and a United Nations school.
Listen: Chris Gunness explains tears after Israeli shelling of UN school
The United States and United Nations condemned the school shelling and Hamas said it fired rockets into Israel in retaliation for both attacks.
But hours after its condemnation the US said it had agreed to sell Israel fresh ammunition to replenish its dwindling supplies.
The killing of 16 civilians at the UN school in Jabaliya refugee camp, which was sheltering some 3,300 homeless Gazans, drew a furious response from the United Nations.
“This morning a UN school sheltering thousands of Palestinian families suffered a reprehensible attack,” UN chief Ban Ki-moon said on a visit to Costa Rica.
“It is unjustifiable, and demands accountability and justice.”
The attack was also denounced by the White House in a carefully worded statement that avoided mentioning Israel.
“The United States condemns the shelling of a UNRWA school in Gaza, which reportedly killed and injured innocent Palestinians, including children, and UN humanitarian workers,” a statement said.
The Pentagon later said it had granted an Israeli request for ammunition, including some from a stockpile stored by the US military on the ground in Israel for emergency use by the Jewish state.
But Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement that Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel told his Israeli counterpart Moshe Yaalon that he was concerned about the deadly consequences of the spiralling conflict, and called for a ceasefire and end to hostilities.
Rights group Amnesty International had urged Washington to halt arms supplies to Israel.
“It is time for the US government to urgently suspend arms transfers to Israel and to push for a UN arms embargo on all parties to the conflict,” it said in a petition to US Secretary of State John Kerry.
It was the second time in a week that a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees was hit, prompting a blistering attack on Israel by UNRWA Commissioner General Pierre Kraehenbuehl.
“I condemn in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces,” he said, indicating the school’s location had been communicated to the Israeli army 17 times.
“No words to adequately express my anger and indignation,” he wrote on his official Twitter account, describing it as “intolerable”.
Siham El Najmi is a journalist based in Dubai.
