A Palestinian man uses a fire extinguisher to douse a fire following an Israeli strike, in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on Oct 14, 2023, as fighting between Israel and the Hamas movement continues for the eighth consecutive day. (PHOTO / AFP)

MARRAKECH, Morocco / UNITED NATIONS / AMMAN / RAMALLAH - World Trade Organization chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said she hoped the Israel-Palestine conflict could be ended quickly, warning it would have a "really big impact" on already weak global trade flows if it widened throughout the region.

Okonjo-Iweala, in Morocco for this week's annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, said Middle East violence could add to factors throttling trade growth, including higher interest rates and Russia's special military operation in Ukraine.

Okonjo-Iweala said global uncertainty was already limiting growth in trade, but that would be exacerbated by the sudden onset of war between Israel and the Hamas group that controls the Gaza Strip

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"We hope this ends soon and it's contained. Our biggest fear is if it widens, because that will then have a really big impact on trade," she said in an interview. "Everybody's on eggshells and hoping for the best."

Okonjo-Iweala said global uncertainty was already limiting growth in trade, but that would be exacerbated by the sudden onset of war between Israel and the Hamas group that controls the Gaza Strip.

"There is uncertainty about whether this is going to spread further to the whole region, which could impact very much on global economic growth," she said. "We hope it will end because it does create this uncertainty. It's another dark cloud on the horizon."

The Geneva-based trade body last week halved its growth forecast for global goods trade this year, citing persistent inflation, higher interest rates, and the crisis in Ukraine.

The WTO said merchandise trade volumes would increase by just 0.8 percent in 2023, compared with its April estimate of 1.7 percent.

For 2024, it said goods trade growth would be 3.3 percent, a forecast virtually unchanged from its April estimate of 3.2 percent.

Riding in a damaged vehicle a Palestinian family flees with hundreds of other following the Israeli army's warning to leave their homes and move south before an expected ground offensive, in Gaza City on October 13, 2023. (PHOTO / AFP)

The 164-member organization repeated its warning that it saw some signs of trade fragmentation linked to global tensions, but no evidence of a broader de-globalization that could threaten its 2024 forecast.

UN chief urged to do more

Meanwhile, Palestine's ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, appealed to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Friday to do more to alleviate the tragedy in Gaza.

Mansour, speaking right before the UN Security Council held closed-door consultations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said ambassadors from the Arab Group will meet with Guterres and asked him to do more.

"We are going to ask him to use the moral power of the office of the SG (secretary-general) in order to help us to implement this three-point plan: cease-fire, humanitarian assistance, and (efforts) not to allow ethnic cleansing to take place," he said.

Mansour said the Arab Group are united to stop the "Israeli carnage" against the Palestinian people, allow for humanitarian assistance and passage, and to not allow, after 75 years of the first Nakba, another Nakba to befall Palestinians by depopulating the Gaza Strip of its 2.3 million people, throwing them outside to Egypt and making it an Egyptian problem.

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Clashes with Israelis across the West Bank have left at least 11 Palestinians dead on Friday, the Ramallah-based Palestinian Health Ministry said.

Security sources told Xinhua that clashes erupted in Nablus, Tulkarm, Hebron, and other West Bank cities on the seventh day of the new round of violence between the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Israel.

At least five deaths are from the city of Tulkarm, the ministry said.

Also on Friday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that he "fully" rejected Israel's plan of displacing the Palestinian people in Gaza during a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jordan's capital Amman, reported Jordan's state-run Petra News Agency.

A woman inspects the damage to her home after Israeli strikes on the Rafah camp in the southern Gaza Strip on October 14, 2023. (PHOTO / AFP)

The Palestinian president also emphasized the need to urgently open humanitarian corridors to the Gaza Strip for the supply of medical necessities, and providing water, electricity, and fuel to the residents.

Abbas cautioned about a looming humanitarian crisis in Gaza due to the suspension of vital services and urged an end to settler attacks in the West Bank, as well as "extremist actions" at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which are worsening the situation.

As of Thursday, more than 338,000 people had been displaced, an increase of 30 percent since Wednesday. More than 218,000 displaced people are sheltering in schools run by the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

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More than 2,500 housing units have been destroyed or severely damaged and rendered uninhabitable while nearly 23,000 units have sustained moderate to minor damage, said the office.

At least 88 education facilities have been struck, including 18 UNRWA schools, two of which were used as emergency shelters for the displaced. This means that for the sixth consecutive day, more than 600,000 children have had no access to education at a safe place in Gaza, it said.