Israel: Hamas Getting UN Help

Tel Aviv: Israel has responded furiously to news it will be included on a UN list of countries and armed forces determined to be failing to protect children in war.

The annual “Children and Armed Conflict” report from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is not due to be published until June 18, but Israel’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, spoke out after receiving private notification of the inclusion.

“I am utterly shocked and disgusted by this shameful decision,” Erdan said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted on his X social media account that the UN “put itself today on history’s blacklist when it adopted the absurd claims of Hamas.” “The IDF is the most moral military in the world and no ‘flat earth’ decision by the UN secretary-general can change that,” he wrote, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.

The Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, said adding Israel to the “list of shame” would not restore the lives of children killed or left permanently disabled in Israeli military attacks.

“But it is an important step in the right direction towards ending the double standards and the culture of impunity Israel has enjoyed for far too long and that left our children vulnerable,” he said on X.

Hamas and another Palestinian militant group, Islamic Jihad, will also appear on the list.

Erdan lashed out at Guterres personally, saying: “The only one who is black-listed today is the secretary-general. Now Hamas will continue even more to use schools and hospitals because this shameful decision of the secretary-general will only give Hamas hope”.

It came as Israeli forces bombarded a Gaza refugee camp yesterday.

As Gaza faced Israeli attacks from land, sea, and air, witnesses said the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza was hit again, a day after an Israeli strike on a UN-run school.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in nearby Deir al-Balah said at least 37 people were killed in the air strike, which the Israeli military said targeted “terrorists” hiding in three classrooms.

Yesterday the military as well as the Hamas-run government media office reported another Israeli strike on a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, in Al-Shati refugee camp.

The army said it targeted Hamas militants operating from a container on the northern Gaza school grounds.

UNRWA chief, Philippe Lazzarini, said on X that despite UN premises being “damaged, destroyed, targeted or used for military purposes almost on a daily basis … no one is being held accountable”.

Israel accuses Hamas and its allies in Gaza of using civilian infrastructure, including UN-run facilities, as operational centres.

A separate Israeli strike killed Nuseirat mayor Iyad al-Mughari and four family members as he visited a water pumping station, a municipality spokesman said yesterday, with the IDF saying he was a Hamas operative.