(Headline USA) The U.N. secretary-general will tell the Security Council next week that both Israel and Hamas are violating children’s rights and leaving them exposed to danger in their war.
The secretary-general annually makes a global list of states and militias that are menacing children and threatening them. Parties on the list have ranged from the Kachin Independence Army in Myanmar to — last year — Russia during its war with Ukraine.
Now Israel is set to join them.
António Guterres sends the list to the Security Council and the council can then decide whether to take action. The United States is one of five veto-wielding permanent council members and has been reluctant to act against Israel, its longtime ally.
Another permanent member is Russia and when the United Nations put Russian forces 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 will likely just put more of a global spotlight on the country’s conduct of the war in Gaza and increase already high tensions in its relationship with the global body.
The preface of last year’s U.N. report says it lists parties engaged in “the killing and maiming of children, rape and other forms of sexual violence perpetrated against children, attacks on schools, hospitals and protected persons.”
The head of Guterres’ office called Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Gilad Erdan, on Friday to inform him that Israel would be in the report when it is sent to the council next week, U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told reporters.
The militant Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad groups will also be listed.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “the U.N. put itself on the black list of history today” as the move heightened the long-running feud between Israel and the U.N.
The normally equanimous secretary-general’s spokesman broke from the good-natured tone of his noon briefing when asked to discuss the latest development.
“The call was a courtesy afforded to countries that are newly listed on the annex of the report,” Dujarric said. “The partial release of that recording on Twitter is shocking and unacceptable and frankly, something I’ve never seen in my 24 years serving this organization.”
Condemnation of the secretary-general’s decision appeared to bring together Israel’s increasingly fractious leadership — from the right-wing Netanyahu and Erdan to the popular centrist member of the War Cabinet, Benny Gantz.
Gantz cited Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, as saying “it matter not what say the goyim, what is important is what do the Jews.”
For months Israel has faced heavy international criticism over civilian casualties in Gaza and questions about whether it has done enough to prevent them in the eight-month-old war. Two recent airstrikes in Gaza killed dozens of civilians.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
