Israel is pushing Palestinians out of Gaza

Jordan's foreign minister Ayman Safadi said on Sunday Israel was implementing a systematic policy of pushing Palestinians out of Gaza by a war that has killed thousands of civilians.

In remarks at a conference in Doha, Safadi, whose country borders the West Bank and had absorbed the bulk of Palestinians after Israel's creation in 1948, also said Israel had created an "amount of hatred " that would "haunt the region" and "define generations to come".

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Sunday said he regrets the Security Council's failure to demand a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, condemning the divisions that have "paralysed" the world body.

Guterres had convened an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council after two months of fighting that have left more than 17,700 people dead in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

The secretary-general deployed the rarely-used Article 99 of the United Nations Charter to bring to the council's attention "any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security".

"We are facing a severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system," Guterres told the Doha Forum.

"The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region."