United Nations Secretary General Next week, he will tell the Security Council that both Israel and Hamas are violating children’s rights and endangering them in their war to destroy each other.
Each year, the Secretary-General draws up a global list of countries and militias that threaten and intimidate children, ranging from Myanmar’s Kachin Independence Army to Russia during last year’s war with Ukraine.
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Now Israel is also ready to join them.
Antonio Guterres sent the list security Council And then the council can decide whether to take action. The United States is one of five veto-wielding permanent members of the council and has been reluctant to take action against its longtime ally, Israel.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during a Security Council meeting at UN Headquarters on April 18, 2024. Guterres will tell the Security Council next week that both Israel and Hamas are violating children’s rights and endangering them in their war to destroy each other. The head of Guterres’ office called Israel’s UN ambassador Gilad Erdan on Friday, June 7, 2024, to tell him that Israel would be included in the report. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Another permanent member is Russia, and when the UN put the Russian military on its blacklist last year for killing boys and girls and attacking schools and hospitals in Ukraine, the council took no action.
The inclusion of Israel this month is likely to further focus global attention on the country’s conduct in the war in Gaza, and exacerbate already deep tensions in its relations with the global body.
The preface to last year’s UN report said it listed parties involved in “killing and maiming children, raping and committing other forms of sexual violence against children, and attacking schools, hospitals and protected persons.”
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters that the head of Guterres’ office called Israel’s UN ambassador Gilad Erdan on Friday to inform him that Israel would be named in the report when it is sent to the council next week.
The militant Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad groups would also be included in the list.
Israel expressed its outrage by sending news organisations a video of Erdan berating the head of Guterres’ office – who was reportedly on the other end of the phone call – and posted it on X.
“Hamas will continue to use schools and hospitals even more, because this shameful decision by the Secretary General will only give Hamas hope to survive and to prolong the war and increase the suffering,” Erdan wrote in a statement.
The Palestinian UN ambassador said adding Israel to the “list of shame” would not bring back the thousands of children it has killed over the decades.
“But this is an important step in the right direction,” Riyad Mansour wrote in a statement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu He said “the United Nations has today put itself on the black list of history” as the move escalated a long-running conflict between Israel and the UN and even Israel’s routine dealings with the world body are now fraught with tensions.
The normally calm Secretary-General’s spokesman broke from the relaxed tone of his afternoon briefing when asked to discuss the latest developments.
“That call was made as a courtesy to the countries that were recently listed in the annex of the report,” Dujarric said. “The partial release of that recording on Twitter is shocking and unacceptable and, frankly, something I have never seen in my 24 years of service to this organisation.”
Condemnation of the secretary-general’s decision united Israel’s increasingly fragmented leadership – from the right-wing Netanyahu and Erdan to Benny Gantz, a popular centrist member of the war cabinet.
“It doesn’t matter what the goyim (non-Jews) say, what matters is what the Jews do,” Gantz said, quoting Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.
Israel has faced heavy international criticism over civilian deaths in Gaza over the past month and questions are being raised over whether it has done enough to prevent them in the eight-month-old war. Two recent air strikes in Gaza killed dozens of civilians.
UN agencies warned on Wednesday that more than 1 million Palestinians in Gaza could face the highest level of starvation in history by the middle of next month if hostilities continue.
The eight-month-long Israel-Hamas war is worsening hunger due to severe restrictions on humanitarian access and the collapse of local food systems, the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation said in a joint report.
An Associated Press analysis of Gaza Health Ministry data showed that the proportion of Palestinian women and children killed in the Israel-Hamas war has fallen sharply. The trend coincides with Israel’s changing war strategy and contradicts the ministry’s own public statements.
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This trend is important because the mortality rate of women and children is the best available proxy for civilian casualties in one of the most devastating conflicts of the 21st century. In October, when the war began, it was above 60%. In the month of April, it was below 40%.
Nevertheless, the change went unnoticed by the UN and most media for months, and the Hamas-linked Health Ministry made no effort to clarify the matter.
