Top UN official quits over Israel ‘apartheid’ report

beirut — The head of a United Nations agency that promotes development in Arab countries resigned on Friday after refusing to withdraw a controversial report concluding that Israel has established an “apartheid regime” that discriminates against Palestinians.

The report titled “Israeli Practices Toward the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid,” which was published earlier this week by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, drew swift criticism from UN and Israeli officials.

Its authors concluded that “Israel has established an apartheid regime that systematically institutionalises racial oppression and domination of the Palestinian people as a whole”.

Rima Khalaf, a Jordanian who heads Beirut-based ESCWA and is a UN undersecretary-general, announced her resignation at a hastily called press conference in the Lebanese capital, saying she couldn’t accept being subjected to pressure from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to withdraw the report.

She described the report as “the first of its kind”, adding that it “concludes scientifically and according to international law that Israel has established an apartheid regime”.

“It was expected, naturally, that Israel and its allies would exercise immense pressure on the UN secretary-general to distance himself from the report and to ask for it to be withdrawn,” she said. —