UN adds Israel to blacklist of offenders that harm children
UNITED NATIONS
The upcoming inclusion of Israel on a U.N. list of countries and armed forces determined to be failing to protect children in war prompted a furious Israeli response Friday.
The annual "Children and Armed Conflict" report from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is not due to be published until June 18, but Israel's U.N. ambassador, Gilad Erdan, spoke out after receiving private notification of the inclusion.
Erdan lashed out at Guterres personally, saying: "The only one who is blacklisted today is the secretary-general."
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.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted on his X social media account that the U.N. "put itself today on history's blacklist when it adopted the absurd claims of Hamas."
Diplomatic sources told that Hamas would also appear on the list.
'Long overdue'
Israel launched its war on Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli official figures.
Hamas also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza; among them 37 the army says are dead.
Israel's offensive has killed more than 36,000 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.
Israel has also delayed the entry of aid into Gaza, depriving the territory's 2.4 million people of clean water, food, medicines and fuel.
Last week, the World Health Organization said that more than four in five children had gone a whole day without eating at least once in 72 hours.
According to the Hamas government media office, at least 32 people, many of them children, have died of malnutrition in Gaza since the war began.
In one of the bloodiest recent single incidents, the Israeli army conducted an air strike on a U.N.-run school in Gaza on Thursday. The nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital said that at least 37 people were killed in the strike, mostly civilians.
The U.N. report highlights human rights violations against children in around 20 conflict zones. Last year, Russia's military and armed entities linked to Russia were included on the list.
Rights groups have long pushed for Israel's inclusion and in 2022, the United Nations issued a warning that Israel would need to show improvements in order not to be added.
In last year's report, the U.N. noted improvements in the situation between 2021 and 2022, with a "meaningful" drop in deaths of children in Israeli strikes.
Louis Charbonneau, from Human Rights Watch, called Israel's inclusion "thoroughly justified, albeit long overdue."
Strikes across Gaza
Efforts to mediate the first ceasefire in the bloody conflict since a week-long pause in November appear to have stalled a week after U.S. President Joe Biden offered a new roadmap.
Hamas has yet to respond to Biden's proposal, while Israel has expressed openness to discussions but remains committed to destroying the Palestinian Islamist group.
In a new diplomatic push, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Israel and key regional partners Egypt, Jordan and Qatar from Monday on his eighth Middle East trip since the war began, the State Department said.
As Gaza faced Israeli attacks from land, sea, and air Friday, witnesses said the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza was hit again, a day after the Israeli strike on the U.N.-run school.
On Friday the military as well as the Hamas-run government media office reported another Israeli strike on a school run by the UNRWA, in Al-Shati refugee camp.
UNRWA said hundreds of displaced Gazans were sheltering at the Nuseirat school targeted Thursday, which was "hit without prior warning".
The agency's chief, Philippe Lazzarini, said on X that despite U.N. premises being "damaged, destroyed, targeted or used for military purposes almost on a daily basis... no one is being held accountable".
A separate Israeli strike late Thursday killed Nuseirat mayor Iyad al-Mughari and four family members as he visited a water pumping station, a municipality spokesman said Friday, with the army saying he was a Hamas operative.
Witnesses and the Israeli military reported strikes and fighting east of Deir al-Balah and near the Bureij camp.
A central Gaza hospital source said a strike on the Wafati home in Maghazi camp killed six people.
Warships bombarded areas west of Gaza City, an AFP correspondent said, and the military released footage of troops in the southern city of Rafah.
Osama al-Kahlut of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society told AFP Israeli forces east of Deir al-Balah were firing on people along Gaza's main thoroughfare, reporting "several wounded".