UNITED NATIONS (AP) 鈥 The U.N. secretary-general will tell the Security Council next week that both Israel and Hamas are violating children's rights and leaving them exposed to danger in their war to eliminate each other.
The secretary-general annually makes a global list of states and militias that are menacing children and threatening them. Parties on the list have ranged from the Kachin Independence Army in Myanmar to 鈥 last year 鈥 Russia during its war with Ukraine.
Now Israel is set to join them.
Ant贸nio Guterres sends the list to the Security Council and the council can then decide whether to take action. The United States is one of five veto-wielding permanent council members and has been reluctant to act against Israel, its longtime ally.
Another permanent member is Russia and when the United Nations put Russian forces on its blacklist last year for killing boys and girls and attacking schools and hospitals in Ukraine, the council took no action.
The inclusion of Israel this month will likely just put more of a global spotlight on the country's conduct of the war in Gaza and increase already high tensions in its relationship with the global body.
The preface of last year鈥檚 U.N. report says it lists parties engaged in 鈥渢he killing and maiming of children, rape and other forms of sexual violence perpetrated against children, attacks on schools, hospitals and protected persons."
The head of Guterres' office called Israel's U.N. ambassador, Gilad Erdan, on Friday to inform him that Israel would be in the report when it is sent to the council next week, U.N. spokesman St茅phane Dujarric told reporters.
The militant Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad groups will also be listed.
Israel reacted with outrage, sending news organizations a video of Erdan berating the head of Guterres' office 鈥 who was supposedly on the other end of a phone call 鈥 and posting it on X.
鈥淗amas will continue even more to use schools and hospitals because this shameful decision of the secretary-general will only give Hamas hope to survive and extend the war and extend the suffering,鈥 Erdan wrote in a statement. 鈥淪hame on him!鈥
The Palestinian U.N. ambassador said that adding Israel to the 鈥溾榣ist of shame,鈥 will not bring back tens of thousands of our children who were killed by Israel over decades.鈥
鈥淏ut it is an important step in the right direction,鈥 Riyad Mansour wrote in a statement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "the U.N. put itself on the black list of history today鈥 as the move heightened the long-running and even the routine mechanics of Israel's dealings with the world body are now fraught with tensions.
The normally equanimous secretary-general's spokesman broke from the good-natured tone of his noon briefing when asked to discuss the latest development.
鈥淭he call was a courtesy afforded to countries that are newly listed on the annex of the report,鈥 Dujarric said. 鈥淭he partial release of that recording on Twitter is shocking and unacceptable and frankly, something I鈥檝e never seen in my 24 years serving this organization.鈥
Condemnation of the secretary-general鈥檚 decision appeared to bring together Israel鈥檚 increasingly fractious leadership 鈥 from the right-wing Netanyahu and Erdan to the popular centrist member of the War Cabinet, Benny Gantz.
Gantz cited Israel鈥檚 first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, as saying 鈥渋t matter not what say the goyim (non-Jews), what is important is what do the Jews.鈥
For month Israel has faced heavy in Gaza and questions about whether it has done enough to prevent them in the eight-month-old war. Two killed dozens of civilians.
U.N. agencies warned Wednesday that over 1 million Palestinians in Gaza could experience the highest level of starvation by the middle of next month if hostilities continue.
The World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a joint report that hunger is worsening because of heavy restrictions on humanitarian access and the collapse of the local food system in .
The proportion of Palestinian women and children being killed in appears to have declined sharply, an Associated Press analysis of Gaza Health Ministry data has found, a trend that both coincides with Israel鈥檚 changing battlefield tactics and contradicts the ministry鈥檚 own public statements.
The trend is significant because the death rate for women and children is the best available proxy for civilian casualties in one of the 21st century鈥檚 . In October, when the war began, it was above 60%. For the month of April, it was below 40%.
Yet the shift went unnoticed for months by the U.N. and much of the media, and the Hamas-linked Health Ministry has made no effort to set the record straight.
