Israel Hits Back at U.N. With Furious Response After Secretary General’s Comments
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Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations said Wednesday that his country will block visas to U.N. representatives after the organization’s head said this month’s attacks by Hamas “did not happen in a vacuum” and noted that the “Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres made a speech about the ongoing crisis in Gaza before the U.N.’s Security Council on Tuesday, in which he also called for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” and said no side in any armed conflict is “above international humanitarian law.”
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His remarks provoked an immediate backlash in Israel, with the country’s Ambassador to the U.N., Gilad Erdan, calling for Guterres’ resignation. “You Mr. Secretary General have lost all morality and impartiality,” Erdan said Tuesday, “Because when you say those terrible words—that these heinous attacks ‘did not happen in a vacuum’—you are tolerating terrorism.”
In another post on X, Erdan said Guterres should “resign immediately.” “There is no justification or point in talking to those who show compassion for the most terrible atrocities committed against the citizens of Israel and the Jewish people,” he wrote. “There are simply no words.”
Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen also canceled a planned meeting with Guterres Tuesday afternoon after his remarks, according to Al Jazeera, before the crisis then deepened on Wednesday morning. “Due to [Guterres’] remarks, we will refuse to issue visas to U.N. representatives,” Erdan told Israel’s national Army Radio. “We have already refused a visa for Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths. The time has come to teach them a lesson.”
The response came despite Guterres saying in his speech that he “condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented 7 October acts of terror by Hamas in Israel,” adding that: “Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians—or the launching of rockets against civilian targets.” Guterres further said he mourned the loss of “at least 35” colleagues who worked for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) who had been killed in the bombardment of Gaza over the last two weeks.
Israel’s decision to deny visas to U.N. representatives came as the UNRWA’s director in Gaza warned that the agency’s aid operation would “come to a stop” without immediate supplies of fuel into the besieged enclave. “People will not have access to clean drinking water, hospitals are gonna be closing, and in fact our whole aid operation will start winding down,” Thomas White told CNN. He added that without fuel, the agency also won’t be able to distribute humanitarian aid if convoys are allowed into Gaza.
The humanitarian disaster in Gaza is already threatening to overwhelm local medical services. Gaza’s health officials claimed Wednesday that 6,546 people have been killed in the region—including 2,704 children—since the widespread Israeli airstrikes began, with over 17,000 others injured.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza also said the bombings had killed at least 750 people between Tuesday and Wednesday—an unprecedented 24-hour death toll in the enclave since Israel stepped up its attacks. The Israeli military says the strikes had killed militants and destroyed military targets including weapon storehouses and tunnels.
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