Tel Aviv, December 7 (RHC)-- Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had reached “a new moral low” after Guterres invoked a rarely used clause on Wednesday. Guterres used the UN charter to formally refer the situation in Gaza to the UN Security Council for discussion, urging its 15 member nations to "avert a humanitarian catastrophe" in the besieged enclave.
Israel's UN ambassador Gilad Erdan took to social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to say the secretary-general decided to activate “this rare clause only when it allows him to put pressure on Israel.” Erdan described Guterres’ move as “more proof of the Secretary-General's moral distortion and his bias against Israel," and accused him for “(choosing) to continue playing into Hamas' hands.”
The envoy reiterated his call for the secretary-general to resign immediately.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen also called on Guterres to resign, saying that the UN chief’s “tenure is a danger to world peace.”
Guterres’ decision to invoke the clause is "an endorsement of the murder of the elderly, the abduction of babies and the rape of women," Cohen wrote on X. A furious diplomatic spat between Israel and the UN broke out in October, with Israeli officials calling for the resignation of Guterres after he said Hamas’ October 7 attacks on the country “did not happen in a vacuum.”
Israel does not recognize the International Court of Justice at The Hague and has repeatedly ignored UN resolutions over the past decades of occupation of Palestinian territories.
