Not content that its ambassador, Gilad Erdan, tore up the United Nations charter at the UN podium last May after a vote on Palestine’s full membership in the organization, the State of Israel reached a new milestone this Tuesday, October 1. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz announced on Tuesday that he had told United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “a person not welcome in Israel”accusing him of not having condemned Iran by name for its massive attack against Israel on Tuesday evening.
“Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel does not deserve to set foot on Israeli soil. We are dealing with an anti-Israeli secretary general who supports terrorists, rapists and murderers,” attacked Israel Katz in a statement. After the Iranian bombing which fired nearly 200 missiles at Israel on Tuesday evening, Antonio Guterres nevertheless condemned “the widening conflict in the Middle East”deploring “the climb after the climb”. A reference to the deadly headlong rush of Benyamin Netanyahu and his government – after more than 40,000 victims in Gaza, the beeper attack, the bombings of Lebanon, the ground offensive… – which arouses the ire of the Israeli executive.
Recurring accusations against the UN
“This has to stop. We absolutely need a ceasefire”further added the UN Secretary General. A position also defended by the United States and France last Thursday, but absolutely rejected by the Israeli Prime Minister who blithely flouts UN resolutions as well as international and humanitarian law.
If the attack is particularly virulent, since October 7 and the start of the war in Gaza, the UN has been regularly targeted by Israel. Calls for Antonio Guterres’ resignation began very quickly, when he stressed that the Hamas attack had not been “not produced in a vacuum” and that “the Palestinian people (had) been subjected to 56 years of stifling occupation”.
Other United Nations figures have paid the price. Like Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of UNRWA, the agency for Palestinian refugees, who only has a one-month visa in Israel, who is no longer authorized to go to Gaza and who Israel Katz – again – has already requested his resignation.
His organization, an essential link in humanitarian aid in the Palestinian enclave, has been the subject of accusations of terrorism from Israel, which seriously hampers its activities in the territory. No tangible evidence supports these allegations, however, the mission led by Catherine Colonna, the former head of French diplomacy at the request of the UN Secretary General, concluded in a report in April.
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