Jason Greenblatt. Photo: Reuters / Amir Cohen / File.

Gaza Strip-based terrorist groups are to blame for the plight of the residents of the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave, a top US official told the UN Security Council on Wednesday.

“It is simply unacceptable that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad continue to target Israeli communities, including hospitals and schools, in a cynical attempt to extract concessions from Israel,” President Donald Trump’s special representative for international negotiations, Jason Greenblatt, said at a Security Council meeting on the Middle East. “It is simply unacceptable that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad continue to use civilians in Gaza, including children, as human shields. It is simply unacceptable that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad continue to siphon the scarce resources of the people of Gaza to build their terror arsenal, while preventing donor aid from reaching the people.”

“Nothing can be meaningfully fixed until they renounce terror and cease their acts of violence and their vow to destroy Israel,” Greenblatt continued. “When will the Security Council say this out loud? When will we clearly reject this terrorism?”

In his remarks, Greenblatt took aim at UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee aid agency. He urged Security Council members to “face the reality that the UNRWA model has failed the Palestinian people.”

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Greenblatt noted, was “sad, and tragic, and complex on so many levels.”

“But we must stop pretending that UNRWA and UN resolutions will somehow solve the conflict,” he added. “They simply won’t.”

According to Greenblatt, the recently-announced US-led economic conference in Bahrain next month will focus on an “alternative path with the potential to unlock a prosperous future for the Palestinians.”

“This is the first stage of a process that we want to begin to showcase what could be — how, if we can achieve a political solution to the conflict, we can also transform the lives of the Palestinians,” he stated. “It would be a mistake for the Palestinians not to join us. They have nothing to lose and much to gain if they do join us. But it is, of course, their choice.”

At the same Security Council gathering on Wednesday, Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon also criticized UNRWA, saying, “For years, UNRWA has been empowering the refugee problem instead of trying to solve it, while adopting a unilateral political position. The organization’s schools have been transformed into terror and incitement infrastructures, with textbooks distributed on the ground denying Israel’s existence, and underground tunnels dug by Hamas.”

“UNRWA has failed to rehabilitate the Gaza Strip,” Danon charged. “It has succeeded only in inciting violence against the State of Israel. UNRWA’s mandate must come to an end.”

Watch Greenblatt’s Security Council speech below: