The notoriously difficult relationship between Israel and the United Nations has sunk to its lowest point since October 7. Last week, it was from the very podium of the UN General Assembly that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once again sounded the charge.
“Until Israel, until the Jewish state, is treated like other nations, until this anti-Semitic swamp is drained, the UN will be considered by righteous people as nothing more “just a contemptuous joke,” he said on Thursday.
Israel, which was quickly accused of “genocide” in its war against Hamas in Gaza among the UN ranks, counterattacked by accusing the organization of anti-Semitism and went so far as to reproach its Secretary General Antonio Guterres of being “an accomplice of terror”.
The recent escalation against Hezbollah in Lebanon has further fanned the flames.
Relations “have deteriorated greatly” and they have gone “from bad to frankly bad”, notes Cyrus Schayegh, professor of international history at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.
Since Hamas’s unprecedented attacks in Israel almost a year ago, UN agencies and international tribunals have condemned the brutality of the Israeli response in Gaza.
“We have the feeling that the UN has betrayed Israel,” the Israeli ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Daniel Meron, told AFP. The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mainly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures which include hostages killed in captivity.
Of the 251 hostages captured by the militants, 97 are still being held in Gaza, including 33 whom the Israeli army declares dead.
Israeli military reprisals have cost the lives of more than 41,500 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to the Hamas-controlled territory’s Health Ministry.
No UN agency has been more criticized and attacked – often physically – by Israel than UNRWA, which cares for Palestinian refugees. But within the international organization no one was spared.
Calls for Antonio Guterres’ resignation began shortly after October 7, when he stressed that the Hamas attack “did not happen in a vacuum.” “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of stifling occupation,” he added.
Israel has long complained about what it perceives as UN bias against it and cites the long list of resolutions targeting the country as proof.
Since the creation of the Human Rights Council in 2006, more than a third of the 300 condemnation resolutions have targeted Israel, says its ambassador in Geneva, who finds this number “staggering”.
Critics point out that since its creation in 1948, the country has ignored a multitude of UN resolutions and international court decisions condemning its actions.
Neither resolution 194 on the right of return of Palestinians expelled during the creation of Israel, nor the condemnation of the occupation of territories conquered in 1967, nor that of the creation of illegal colonies have been respected.
By allowing Israel to remain in a situation of “non-compliance with international law, the West has made Israelis believe that they are above international law,” Riccardo Bocco, professor of political sociology, told AFP. at the University Institute of Geneva.
This lack of tangible consequences “has made the parties to the conflict more impudent”, notes Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in an interview with AFP.
“We have sounded the alarm repeatedly and now we have the impression that impunity reigns,” she said, denouncing the incessant “unacceptable” attacks, including from senior Israeli officials.
However, it is UNRWA which pays the high price and the price of blood.
After a handful of its 13,000 employees in Gaza were shown to have been directly involved in the October 7 attacks, major donors temporarily cut funding to the agency.
His boss Philippe Lazzarini accused Israel of wanting to “systematically dismantle” UNRWA which saw many of its infrastructures destroyed in the Gaza Strip, where 220 employees were killed.
Francesca Albanese, independent expert, appointed by the Human Rights Council (HRC), in charge of the Palestinian territories, recently wondered “if we should not question membership” in the UN , “for which Israel seems to have no respect?”.
Ms Albanese is vilified by the Israeli authorities, including Ambassador Meron who calls her “anti-Semitic”.
Colleagues of the Italian lawyer are worried about the long-term consequences for a UN that is constantly called into question or ignored.
Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the HRC’s expert on the right to drinking water, sums up: “We are going to blow up the UN if we don’t react.”
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