Israeli officials railed against U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday after he appeared to suggest that the trigger for the Hamas terror group’s devastating attack on Israel on Oct. 7 was the Jewish state’s continued control over the Palestinian territories.
“It is important to recognize that Hamas’ attacks did not take place in a vacuum,” Guterres said at a U.N. Security Council meeting on the war between Israel and Hamas, which erupted when the terror group devastated Israeli border communities, killing about 1,400 people . The vast majority of them are civilians.
“The Palestinian people have been subjected to oppressive occupation for 56 years. They have seen their land continually consumed by settlements and wracked by violence. their economy ground to a halt; Their people were displaced and their homes destroyed. “Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have faded,” Guterres said.
As part of the 2005 troop withdrawal, Israel evacuated all settlements and forces from the Gaza Strip. Since Hamas came to power in 2007, the country has maintained a strict blockade of the territory, as has Egypt. Jerusalem said it had to do so to limit the terror group’s ability to arm itself for attacks. In the West Bank, settlements have expanded under successive governments, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly arguing that the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority is not a partner for peace, having rejected several offers in the past.
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Guterres added that “the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify Hamas’ horrific attacks.” And these horrific attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” an apparent reference to Israel’s ongoing airstrikes campaign in the Gaza Strip, according to Hamas officials have killed thousands.
Israel was outraged by Guterres’ comments. UN envoy Gilad Erdan called it “shocking”, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen canceled a meeting with Guterres and Minister Benny Gantz called the UN chief a “terror apologist”.
Erdan said the remarks were “terrible” and “completely in line with the reality in our region.”
“His statements … constitute a justification for terrorism and murder,” Erdan said, accusing them of expressing “understanding” for the massacres.
“It is sad that a person with such views is the head of an organization that emerged after the Holocaust,” he said. “It’s really unbelievable.”
Secretary of State Eli Cohen speaks during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the Middle East conflict at U.N. headquarters in New York City on Oct. 24, 2023. (Timothy A Clary/AFP)
Secretary Cohen, who had traveled to New York to attend the war meetings, posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he was canceling a planned meeting with Guterres. After what happened on October 7, he wrote: “There is no room for an impartial approach. “Hamas must be wiped off the face of the earth.”
Gantz, who recently joined the government as a member of the narrow War Cabinet that oversees the war effort, also spoke harshly, posting on X: “Dark are the days when the Secretary General of the United Nations condones terror.”
“Absolutely nothing can justify the slaughter of innocent civilians,” he wrote. “Now is the time to be on the right side of history or be judged by it. Terror apologists cannot speak for the world.”
On October 7, Hamas suddenly bombarded Israel with thousands of rockets while over 2,500 gunmen breached the Gaza border. The terrorists rampaged murderously through southern areas, slaughtering those they found, slaughtering entire families in some communities and also killing 260 people at an outdoor music festival. Some victims were mutilated, raped and tortured. Dozens of babies were killed. Before the IDF could counter the invasion, over 220 people of all ages were kidnapped and taken back to Gaza as prisoners. Four have since been released.
Israel responded to the Hamas attack by vowing to destroy the terror group and launched intense attacks in Gaza, saying it was hitting terror targets while trying to avoid civilian casualties. Over a million Gazans have been ordered to evacuate the northern part of the Gaza Strip ahead of an expected ground attack.
Palestinians inspect damage to destroyed homes after Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City, October 24, 2023. (Abed Khaled/AP)
According to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, more than 5,700 Palestinians have been killed in the attacks so far. These figures cannot be independently verified and are believed to include Hamas’s own members as well as civilians killed by misfired Palestinian rockets.
The Security Council meeting was attended by top diplomats, including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has previously rejected calls for a ceasefire, saying it would only allow Hamas to regroup.
Guterres said he was “deeply concerned by the clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza. “Let me be clear: no party to an armed conflict is above international humanitarian law.”
“The relentless bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces, civilian casualties and massive destruction of neighborhoods continue to increase and are deeply worrying,” he said.
Guterres noted that he had previously “unequivocally condemned Hamas’ terrible and unprecedented … terrorist acts” and called for all hostages to be treated humanely and “released immediately and without conditions.”
People leave their vehicles to take cover during a Palestinian rocket attack from the Gaza Strip along a main street in Tel Aviv on October 24, 2023. (Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP)
In parallel with its military campaign, Israel has also imposed a near-total blockade of the Gaza Strip, although some humanitarian aid has been allowed to enter from Egypt in recent days under a U.S.-brokered deal.
“But [that] is a drop of help in an ocean of need,” Guterres said, warning that it would be a “disaster” if Gaza runs out of fuel.
He warned that the conflict was at “risk of escalation throughout the region,” called for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire” and pushed for an eventual two-state solution that would see the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Secretary of State Cohen also attended the Security Council meeting and brought with him family members of some people held captive in Gaza.
Addressing the forum, he warned that if the United Nations does not support efforts to eradicate Hamas, it will face its “darkest hour” under Guterres’ leadership.
Meanwhile, the United Nations on Tuesday called for improved coordination between humanitarian groups to ensure that the small amount of aid now entering the Gaza Strip included only the most needed items.
A convoy of trucks carrying humanitarian aid enters the Gaza Strip from Egypt via the Rafah border crossing on October 21, 2023. (Eyad Baba/AFP)
UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, said some of the food supplied to Gaza so far, such as rice and lentils, had been unusable given dwindling availability of fresh water and fuel.
“An additional challenge with a very limited flow of supplies is that we are not really receiving the most urgent or relevant supplies for Gaza,” UNRWA spokeswoman Tamara Alrifai said.
“In one of the deliveries over the last few days, we received boxes of rice and lentils,” she told reporters at the United Nations in Geneva via video link from the Jordanian capital Amman, where UNRWA is based.
“But in order for people to cook lentils and rice, they need water and gas. And that’s why these types of aid – while very generous and well-intentioned – are not very useful right now,” she said.
Alrifai added that before October 7, around 500 trucks were entering Gaza daily from Israel and Egypt, carrying a mix of commercial goods, food, aid and fuel.
But since the agreement came into force on Saturday, only a few dozen trucks carrying food, medicine and water have entered the Gaza Strip via the southern border with Egypt.
“As a consortium of humanitarian workers, we need to get better at sending out very clear lists of the things that are most needed,” Alrifai said.
Trucks carrying fuel drive in the Gaza Strip on October 22, 2023. (Mohammed Abed/AFP)
Fuel problems
The United Nations has warned that more hospitals and other vital services in the Palestinian territory risk closing without fuel supplies.
Israel fears that Hamas would use the fuel imported into Gaza to make weapons and explosives. The IDF also said on Tuesday that Hamas was keeping at least half a million liters of fuel for its military use and withholding it from hospitals.
Alrifai said fuel crossings to Gaza could be logistically handled by UNRWA, which was obliged to report any abuses.
“When we receive fuel or other equipment at UNRWA, we are responsible for its handling. “Some close donors and close countries have raised the security issue… We have an obligation to report to them any abuse we see or any risk,” she said.
Alrifai said UNRWA has a “very robust due diligence system to ensure that everything we receive is used only for humanitarian purposes.”
Israel has often accused UNRWA of failing to report Hamas’ misdeeds, essentially allowing the terror group to operate freely within Gaza’s civilian population.
Medical help
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it had been unable to distribute life-saving health supplies from the truck convoys to major hospitals in northern Gaza due to a lack of security guarantees.
In the main Al-Shifa hospital in the north, there were now three patients in two beds, it was said.
“In addition to the hospitals forced to close due to damage and attacks, six hospitals across the Gaza Strip have already been closed due to fuel shortages,” the WHO said in a statement.
Medical supplies were delivered to four hospitals in southern Gaza, and medics “carried boxes of supplies from the trucks directly to operating rooms where doctors performed surgeries without anesthesia or other basic surgical supplies,” the agency said.