Israel declares UN chief Antonio Guterres persona non grata
The United Nations says Israel’s ban on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres entering the country is a political statement by its foreign minister.
The UN has called Israel’s ban on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres entering the country a political statement by its foreign minister, and stressed that the world body’s contacts with Israel will continue “because they have to”.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said overnight on Wednesday that Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz deeming the UN chief “persona non grata” was “one more attack on the UN staff that we’ve seen from the government of Israel”.
Israel’s accusations of UN bias and anti-Semitism date back decades, but the rift has intensified since Hamas’s October 7 attacks. An Israeli ground incursion in Lebanon against Hezbollah and an Iranian missile strike against Israel on Tuesday have threatened to plunge the Middle East into all-out war.
The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting on Wednesday on the Middle East.
Mr Guterres didn’t respond to a question about the ban as he headed to the meeting, where he demanded a halt to the escalation of “tit-for-tat violence” that he warned was leading people in the Middle East “straight over the cliff”.
Earlier in the day, Mr Katz had accused Mr Guterres of being biased against Israel, saying the UN chief never condemned the Hamas attacks and sexual violence committed by its fighters.
Mr Katz declared Mr Guterres “persona non grata” for failing to specifically condemn Iran’s missile attack when he condemned on Tuesday the “broadening conflict in the Middle East”.
“Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel does not deserve to step foot on Israeli soil,” he said. “This is an anti-Israel secretary-general who lends support to terrorists, rapists and murderers.”
Mr Katz added that Mr Guterres, who he said supported the “murderers of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and now Iran, the mothership of global terror, will be remembered as a stain on the history of the UN for generations to come”.
Mr Dujarric strongly disagreed, saying Mr Guterres has condemned “over and over again the terror attacks, the acts of sexual violence and other horrors that we’ve seen”. The Israeli government strongly objected, however, to the secretary-general’s phrase in his initial condemnation that said Hamas’s attack didn’t happen “in a vacuum”.
Israel also has accused staff from the UN agency helping Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, the key provider of assistance in Gaza, of being Hamas members and participating in the October 7 attacks and has curtailed their activities.
The UN’s internal watchdog has been investigating those Israeli allegations.
UNRWA on Monday said a top Hamas commander killed in Lebanon was an employee who had been suspended since allegations of his ties to the militant group emerged in March.
UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini has accused Israel of trying to destroy its operations. The agency provides education, healthcare, food and other services to several million Palestinians and their families.
Mr Guterres also has accused Israel of “collective punishment” of Palestinians in Gaza in its nearly year-long military response to the Hamas attacks, saying he had not seen so much death and destruction during his seven years as secretary-general.
Mr Dujarric said in his 24 years at the UN, there had been UN staff declared persona non grata by a country but he didn’t know of a secretary-general being banned. He stressed that the UN had never recognised the concept being applied to its staff.
Under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the practice applies to a country declaring a diplomat persona non grata, not an international organisation.
“We continue our contacts with Israel at the operational level and other levels, because we need to,” Mr Dujarric said.
AP
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