If UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres hopes to play any kind of constructive role in the current Mideast crisis, it is unclear how becoming irrelevant in Israel helps his cause.
And that is what he has become in Jerusalem: irrelevant.Anyone ever involved in mediation efforts understands that to be successful, the mediator needs to win a modicum of trust from both parties in the conflict. At the very least, a mediator needs to be seen as fair.
Since Hamas’s barbaric attack on October 7, Guterres has proven himself in Israeli eyes to be anything but fair. As such, he has lost the confidence of Jerusalem, and without Jerusalem’s trust he will not be able to accomplish much.This is something many in the world – especially in the EU and at the UN – fail to realize: if they want to play a role, they will need Israel’s cooperation, and they are not going to get that cooperation by making outlandish statements and coming across to Israeli officials and the Israeli public as completely one-sided.EU Foreign policy czar Josep Borrell fell into that trap again last week, charging at the UN that Israel was intentionally starving Gazans.“Starvation is used as a weapon of war,” Borrell said. “Israel is provoking famine.”
Israelis are not going to listen to him too attentively going forward after that kind of libelous charge.
Guterres made the same mistake on Saturday, standing in Rafah and accusing Israel of collectively punishing the Palestinians.
“Nothing justifies the horrific attacks by Hamas on October 7th – and nothing justifies the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.” He then decried a line of blocked relief trucks into Gaza as a “moral outrage.”
Accusations of collective punishment
What was outrageous was for Guterres to characterize Israel’s defense of its borders and its people as a “collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”Israel is not trying to collectively punish the Palestinians. It is trying to destroy an organization hell-bent on destroying the Jewish state, an organization that embedded itself deep inside Gaza’s civilian population, knowing full well that civilians will be killed when Israel responds to their atrocities. But that is Hamas’ strategy.The war Israel is waging in Gaza is no more collective punishment of the Palestinians than the Allies fighting the Nazis was collective punishment of the Germans. It wasn’t. The Allies wanted to destroy the Nazis so Western civilization could endure, and in the process, more than two million German civilians were killed. Israel wants to destroy Hamas so that the Jewish state can survive, and in the process Gazan civilians are being killed because Hamas has hidden behind and under them.This has nothing to do with collective punishment, and Guterres – by saying that it does – is just parroting Hamas propaganda.This is not the first time Guterres has made this claim. He made it in a post in late October, before Israel even began its ground maneuver in Gaza, saying, “The grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”That post was his way of explaining yet another inexplicable statement: telling the UN Security Council that “Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring, and kidnapping of civilians – or the launching of rockets against civilian targets. It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.”Guterres lost Israel when he began contextualizing mass murder, rape, and kidnapping. And losing Israel means also losing any possibility of playing a meaningful role during the current crisis. After statements like those, Jerusalem is not going to listen to anything Guterres has to say.Following Guterres’ comments in October, Israel’s ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan called for Guterres to resign.These calls in Israel only got louder as it emerged that a number of UNRWA employees were involved in the October 7 massacre, as the number of Hamas members and supporters working for UNRWA became public knowledge, and as more and more Hamas positions and arms storerooms were found in, under or near UNRWA facilities.It is clear, in light of this, that Guterres’ statements will have little impact on Israeli policy-making. That being the case, words he spoke Saturday in Rafah can only be understood as intended to further damage Israel in the world.Speaking from the Egyptian side of the Gaza-Egypt border, Guterres bewailed the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, placing it firmly on Israel’s shoulder without mentioning Hamas’s responsibility, nor its hijacking of humanitarian aid, nor how it has misused UNRWA facilities and used the ostensible relief works organization to further its own terrorist goals.Further, the UN chief then drew the moral equivalence between Hamas’s attack on October 7 and Israel’s response to it.Katz immediately responded to Guterres on X:“The UN Secretary-General … stood today on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing and blamed Israel for the humanitarian situation in Gaza, without condemning in any way the Hamas-ISIS terrorists who plunder humanitarian aid, without condemning UNRWA that cooperates with terrorists, and without calling for the immediate, unconditional release of all Israeli hostages. Under his leadership, the UN has become an antisemitic and anti-Israeli body that shelters and emboldens terror.”A few hours later, after the US Congress banned US funding of UNRWA for a year, Katz wrote: “The US decision to halt funding to UNRWA is a clear vote of no confidence” in Guterres.“Under his leadership, UNRWA has become a terrorist arm of Hamas, with its employees involved in the horrific massacre on October 7,” Katz said, adding that anyone who refuses to condemn Hamas’s crimes and fails to respond to calls to dismiss the head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, as Guterres has done, “must go home.”If this were just a war of words between Guterres and Israel’s senior diplomat, that would be one thing. But more is at stake here: the ability of the UN to play any constructive role at all during the current crisis or to have any impact whatsoever on Israeli policy.•