UNITED NATIONS – In an upcoming report to the UN Security Council, the world body’s secretary general plans to list both Israel and Hamas as countries waging a war that violates the rights and protections of children.
The foreword to last year’s report states that it lists parties involved in “the killing and maiming of children, rape and other forms of sexual violence against children, attacks on schools, hospitals and protected persons.”
The head of Secretary General António Guterres’ office called Israel’s UN ambassador. Gilad Erdanto inform him on Friday that Israel would be included in the report when it is sent to the Council next week, UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told reporters.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad will also be included on the list.
Israel reacted indignantly, sending news organizations a video of Erdan berating the head of Guterres’ office, allegedly on the other end of a phone call.
“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 prolong the war and prolong the suffering,” Erdan wrote in a statement. “He should be ashamed!”
The move exacerbated a long-running feud between Israel and the UN, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying: “The UN has today blacklisted itself from history.”
The condemnation of the secretary general’s decision appeared to bring together Israel’s increasingly fractious leadership — from right-wing Netanyahu and Erdan to popular centrist war cabinet member Benny Gantz.
Gantz quoted Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, as saying, “It doesn’t matter what the goyim (non-Jews) say, what matters is what the Jews do.”
Meanwhile, the Palestinian UN ambassador said adding Israel to the “list of shame” will not bring back tens of thousands of our children who have been murdered by Israel for decades.
“But it is an important step in the right direction,” Riyad Mansour wrote in a statement.
Israel is facing heavy international criticism over Gaza’s civilian casualties and questioning whether it has done enough to prevent them in an eight-month war. Two recent airstrikes in Gaza killed dozens of civilians.
UN agencies warned on Wednesday that more than 1 million Palestinians in Gaza could experience the highest level of famine by the middle of next month if hostilities continue.
The World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a joint report that hunger is worsening due to severe restrictions on humanitarian access and the collapse of the local food system during the eight-month war between Israel and Hamas.
An Associated Press analysis of Gaza Health Ministry data shows a sharp decline in the share of Palestinian women and children killed in the war between Israel and Hamas. This trend coincides with Israel’s changing battlefield tactics and contradicts the ministry’s own public statements. .
This trend is significant because the mortality rate among women and children is the best available measure of civilian casualties in one of the most destructive conflicts of the 21st century. In October, when the war started, this percentage was above 60 percent. For the month of April this was below 40 percent.
Yet this shift went unnoticed by the UN and much of the media for months, and the Hamas-affiliated Health Ministry made no effort to put things right.
