Israel has thrown down the gauntlet to António Guterres. The United Nations secretary-general should resign, Israel says, because of a clumsy speech that could be interpreted as an attempt to justify Hamas’s atrocities in response to the “suffocating occupation” of Gaza.
The call to quit was more than a heat-of-the-moment repudiation by an Israeli government under strain. It reflected a growing sense in the Israeli political class that the institutions of the UN are skewed against it. The UN leadership should be able to mediate in good faith and assert itself as a moral authority. Instead, often buoyed by the Security Council members Russia and China, and by Muslim-majority states in the General Assembly, it seems to favour a world view of Israel as an oppressor.
Palestinian victimhood is taken as a given. Guterres, as a former president of Socialist International, which represents the world’s left-wing parties, presided over an organisation that was quick to condemn the supposed evils of the Israeli occupation. That has carried over into his tenure at the UN; a deep and complex bias runs through the New York-based institution that raises doubt as to whether Guterres or any other secretary-general is capable of steering the Middle East towards an enduring peace.
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The phrasing of the speech that so offended the Israelis provides a clue. It sounded as if it was borrowed from the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council which, in its frequent judgments, ignores some of the worst dictatorships (China is a member and has escaped major condemnation for its treatment of Uighur Muslims) and stacks up complaints about Israel. Early next month Iran — sponsor of Hamas and a brutal police state at home — will take up the chairmanship of the UN Human Rights Council’s social forum. An indication of the innate hostility of the council came the other day when many members greeted the arrival of the United States ambassador to the UN by standing up and turning their backs to her.
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The UN General Assembly is no more encouraging. The Arab draft of a resolution condemning the Hamas massacre managed not to mention Hamas at all and called for the immediate end of the Israeli-ordered evacuation of Palestinians from north to south Gaza. A second Russian resolution borrowed some phrasing from Brazilian and US drafts but demanded a comprehensive ceasefire — a move designed to buy Hamas time to recover and regroup its militants. UN Women — a UN entity set up in 2000 under Resolution 1325 to safeguard women’s rights — has failed to issue a clear condemnation of gender-based war crimes mounted by Hamas. Women were raped and murdered as well as taken hostage in the October 7 attack. UN Women did, however, find time to issue a hefty paper on the needs of Gazan women.
The firing or resignation of Guterres is unlikely to happen any time soon, but there are matters of tone and policy that he can introduce now to make the UN less lopsided in its judgments. The offending speech could have begun quite differently along the lines of: “Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people and undermines their legitimate aspirations…” That would have been better, at least, than trying to establish a moral equivalence between the atrocities committed by Hamas, and Israel’s military efforts to control the terrorist group. If there is to be a coherent policy when the dust has settled, it should be a UN-backed strategy to disconnect Gazans from Hamas.
The institutional dysfunction of the United Nations has been apparent for some time, hobbled as it is by the politically charged vetoes of the Security Council members Russia and China. That does not make the task of Guterres any easier and it’s difficult to see how any of the proposed council reforms, such as enlarging it, will improve governance. Something has to be done, however, to make the UN’s voice clearer and its policy positions fairer. No wonder Israel is furious: its enemies are using an organisation set up to head off a repeat of the Holocaust by make it a whipping boy.
