"This is a matter of life and death, a matter of urgency, and we will discuss this this afternoon. I believe that the Security Council cannot just talk, the Security Council has to act," said Riviere minutes before going into a closed-door meeting on the weekend Israeli attacks on Rafah. Along with the usual demands for a ceasefire, the release of Hamas-held hostages and access for humanitarian aid, Riviere said the council should "take measures to allow the UN to play its full role in the Gaza Strip, to face the immediate needs of the population." To that end, the council "should allow the Palestinians to govern Gaza, which will be an integral part of their state, otherwise we will continue to go from crisis to crisis," the French diplomat said, joining a chorus of voices calling for a Palestinian-led postwar settlement and rejecting Israeli suggestions that a future government could be cobbled together from a coalition of Arab states without Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. Although Security Council resolutions are theoretically binding — not merely hortatory like those of the General Assembly — the body has already passed at least two since the war began that have had no effect on the ground, the most recent on March 25 calling for "an immediate ceasefire" and access for humanitarian aid to Gaza, demands that Israel has refused to implement. The International Court of Justice last week also ordered Israel to immediately end its military operations in Rafah, an order the Israeli government has likewise ignored. On the contrary, it has stepped up its offensive, with the Israeli military committing one of the deadliest single atrocities of the war on Sunday when it shelled a camp for displaced persons near Rafah, killing dozens.