UN report seen as vindication in Israel
But officials want more action from world body
Israelis largely welcomed a UN report that supported allegations of sexual violence during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack, even as a top Israeli official accused the United Nations of not doing enough to address the findings — a sign of the rising tensions between them.
The UN report, released Monday, found both “reasonable grounds to believe” that sexual violence against multiple people had occurred in at least three locations in Israel, and “clear and convincing information” that hostages taken to the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7 had been subjected to sexual violence, including rape.
On Tuesday, President Isaac Herzog of Israel said on social media that the report was “of immense importance,” and he lauded it for its “moral clarity and integrity.”
But Israel Katz, Israel’s foreign minister, accused UN Secretary-General António Guterres in a social media post of making a concerted effort to “forget the report and avoid making the necessary decisions.” In protest, Katz recalled Israel’s representative to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, for consultations — a step short of withdrawing the ambassador for a longer term. Erdan was on a plane back to Israel on Tuesday, he said.
A UN spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, said that he did not accept — or even understand — the criticism, and that the report was done “thoroughly and expeditiously” and that “in no way, shape or form did the secretary-general do anything to ‘bury’ the report.” UN officials alerted journalists in advance of the report’s release and held a news conference to discuss it, and the report received extensive news coverage.
Guterres has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s invasion of Gaza and has been pushing for an immediate and binding cease-fire. And there is deep distrust of the United Nations among Israelis, who see the body as biased against their country — a fact that was noted in the report on Oct. 7.
In Cairo, negotiations for the release of hostages and a cease-fire ended Tuesday with no breakthrough, according to both Israeli and Hamas officials. Hamas has insisted it would only agree to a cease-fire and an exchange of hostages for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons if Israeli forces withdraw completely from Gaza, a condition that Israeli leaders have rejected.
Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official, said Tuesday that the group had told Egyptian and Qatari mediators — Hamas and Israel do not officially speak with each other — that its position was unchanged. The Biden administration, which has been pushing more forcefully in recent days for an immediate cease-fire, has put the onus on Hamas.
President Biden said Tuesday cease-fire talks were “in the hands of Hamas right now.” He said that the Israelis, whose negotiators were not in Cairo, had “been cooperating” in the indirect talks, and that “a rational offer” had been made.
“We will know in a couple of days what’s going to happen,” Biden said as he returned to the White House from spending the weekend in Camp David preparing for his State of the Union speech on Thursday. “We need a cease-fire.”
Biden’s remarks echoed similar comments earlier in the day by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and on Monday by Vice President Kamala Harris.
As the fighting continues, food shortages have become more dire in Gaza. The United States made a second round of airdrops of aid into the territory on Tuesday, with US Air Force cargo planes dropping 36,800 ready-to-eat meals in a joint operation with the Jordanian air force.
The first US airdrop was Saturday, two days after more than 100 Palestinians were killed as Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd swarming around a convoy of aid trucks in northern Gaza. Doctors at Gaza hospitals said most of the casualties were from gunfire.
The Israeli military has said most of the victims on Thursday were trampled as they tried to seize the cargo, although Israeli officials acknowledged that troops had fired on some people who they said had threatened them.
A statement from UN rights experts, released by Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on Tuesday, described the bloodshed as a massacre and accused Israeli troops of killing at least 112 people and injuring some 760.
“Israel has been intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza since 8 October,” it said, in some of the harshest language the United Nations has used since the war began. “Now it is targeting civilians seeking humanitarian aid and humanitarian convoys. Israel must end its campaign of starvation and targeting of civilians.”
After the convoy killings, Biden said the United States would find new ways to get food and other supplies to Palestinians. Only a trickle of aid has been reaching northern Gaza via land, but aid groups have criticized airdrops as ineffective.
The Times of Israel reported Tuesday that Israel has begun bringing in aid through the border between Israel and northern Gaza, where the United Nations says the lack of food is extremely acute.