The Financial Times newspaper said that the Israeli government is considering taking punitive measures against United Nations agencies operating in occupied Palestine and Israel, after escalating tensions between Tel Aviv and the organization against the backdrop of its inclusion of Israel in the blacklist of countries that kill children.
The British newspaper quoted informed sources as saying that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed during a meeting last Sunday evening a set of measures that may include expelling UN employees.
It was reported that an Israeli official said during the meeting that UN agencies should be concerned.
According to the Financial Times, the measures that Israel is considering imposing on United Nations agencies also include delaying or refusing to renew the visas of foreign United Nations employees, and the Israeli government’s boycott of some senior United Nations officials, as well as the termination of work and complete expulsion of United Nations missions, such as The peacekeeping force of the Truce Supervision Organization established in 1948.
The newspaper said that there is concern in Western diplomatic circles about the fate of United Nations agencies in Palestine, which play an essential role in the field of humanitarian relief in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, including the United Nations Children’s Agency (UNICEF) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Black list
The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, informed the Israeli mission to the United Nations last Friday that Israel had been included in the “blacklist of countries that kill children.”
The move sparked official Israeli anger, with a succession of angry responses to the decision from Netanyahu government officials.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, said that he received official notification from Guterres that the Israeli army was included on a global blacklist of perpetrators of violations against children, describing the decision as “shameful.”
Erdan added that the one who entered the “blacklist” today is the Secretary-General of the United Nations, who encourages terrorism.
Netanyahu also confirmed that the United Nations placed itself on the blacklist of history when it joined the supporters of what he described as killers from the Hamas movement.
He added, “The Israeli army is the most moral army in the world, and any ridiculous United Nations decision will not change this reality.”
In turn, Israeli Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz warned that the decision to include Israel on the blacklist would affect Tel Aviv’s relations with the United Nations.