Israel sees vindication in the UN report, but tensions between them are rising

Israelis largely welcomed a U.N. report supporting allegations of sexual violence during the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack, even as a top Israeli official accused the United Nations of not doing enough to address the findings — a sign of the increasing tensions between them.

The UN report, released on Monday, found both “reasonable grounds to believe” that sexual violence against multiple people had occurred in at least three locations in Israel, and “clear and convincing information” that hostages had been taken into Gaza on October 7. subjected to sexual violence, including rape.

Tuesday, President Isaac Herzog of Israel said on X that the report was ‘of enormous importance’, and he praised it for its ‘moral clarity and integrity’.

But Israel Katz, Israel’s foreign minister, accused UN Secretary General António Guterres in a social media post of making a concerted effort to “forget the report and avoid the necessary decisions.” In protest, Mr. Katz recalled Israel’s representative to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, for consultations — a step short of withdrawing the ambassador for a longer term. Mr. Erdan was on a plane back to Israel on Tuesday, he said.

A UN spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, said he did not accept – or even understand – the criticism and that the report was prepared “thoroughly and expeditiously” and that “the Secretary General in no way, in any form, did something to ‘bury’ the situation. ‘ the report.” UN officials warned journalists prior to the report’s release and held a press conference to discuss it, and the report received extensive coverage.

Mr Guterres has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip and has called for an immediate and binding ceasefire. And there is deep distrust of the United Nations among Israelis, who view the organization as biased against their country – a fact noted in the October 7 report.

In Cairo, negotiations over the release of hostages and a ceasefire ended without a breakthrough on Tuesday, both Israeli and Hamas officials said. Hamas has insisted it would only agree to a ceasefire and hostage exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons if Israeli forces withdraw completely from Gaza, a condition Israeli leaders have rejected.

Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official, said on Tuesday that the group had told Egyptian and Qatari mediators – Hamas and Israel do not officially speak – that its position was unchanged.

The Biden administration, which has stepped up its push for an immediate ceasefire in recent days, has placed responsibility on Hamas.

President Biden said Tuesday that ceasefire negotiations are “currently in the hands of Hamas.” He said the Israelis, whose negotiators were not in Cairo, had “cooperated” in the indirect talks, and that “a rational offer” had been made.

“We’ll know in a few days what’s going to happen,” Biden said as he returned to the White House after spending the weekend at Camp David in preparation for his State of the Union address on Thursday. “We need a ceasefire.”

Mr. Biden’s comments echoed similar remarks earlier in the day by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and on Monday by Vice President Kamala Harris.

As fighting continues, food shortages in Gaza have become increasingly acute. The United States carried out a second round of airdrops in the area on Tuesday, with US Air Force cargo planes dropping 36,800 ready-to-eat meals in a joint operation with the Jordanian Air Force.

The first US airborne took place on Saturday, two days after more than 100 Palestinians were killed when Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd swarming a convoy of aid trucks in northern Gaza. Doctors at hospitals in Gaza said most of the casualties were the result of gunfire.

The Israeli military has said most of the victims were trampled on Thursday as they tried to seize the cargo, although Israeli officials acknowledged that troops had fired at some people they said had threatened them.

A statement of UN rights experts, released on Tuesday by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, described the bloodshed as a massacre and accused Israeli forces of killing at least 112 people and wounding around 760.

“Israel has deliberately starved the Palestinian people in Gaza since October 8,” it said in one of the harshest words used by the United Nations since the start of the war. “Now it is targeting civilians seeking humanitarian assistance and humanitarian convoys. Israel must end its campaign of starvation and targeting of civilians.”

After the convoy killings, President Biden said the United States would find new ways to deliver food and other supplies to the Palestinians. Only a trickle of aid has reached northern Gaza by land, but aid groups have criticized airdrops as ineffective. The amount of aid delivered by a French plane in an airborne landing last week was far less than a single truckload.

The Times of Israel reported on Tuesday that Israel has begun bringing aid through the border between Israel and northern Gaza, where the United Nations says the lack of food is extremely acute. The aid had only entered through two border crossings in the far south of Gaza, one from Egypt and one from Israel.

Fifteen children have died of malnutrition in a hospital in Gaza City, the United Nations said on Tuesday, adding that the figures in other hospitals could be higher.

At the same time, the death toll among Gazans from Israeli bombing continues to rise. Gaza health authorities said on Tuesday that nearly 100 Gazans had been killed by Israeli forces in the past 24 hours. The death toll after almost five months of war is over 30,000 people, the majority of whom are women and children.

The UN report released on Monday was based on information collected in Israel and the occupied West Bank by a team of experts led by Pramila Patten, the Secretary General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict .

The report noted that a range of fighters from Hamas and other groups took part in the October 7 attack, and that UN experts, who conducted two-and-a-half weeks of investigations in Israel and the West Bank, were unable to determine whether anyone who had committed sexual assaults belonged to specific factions. The report details significant challenges in determining what had happened, including the team’s limited time on the scene, the failure of overwhelmed Israeli authorities to focus on collecting forensic evidence and the destruction of some evidence in fires.

Nevertheless, many in Israel welcomed the report. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a law professor at Bar-Ilan University and women’s rights activist, said on Tuesday she was confused by Mr Katz’s decision to recall Mr Erdan.

The UN report “serves at the highest level to confirm that sexual violence and gender atrocities were indeed part of Hamas’ attack on October 7,” she said.

Israeli activists have in the past expressed frustration over what they perceived as the United Nations’ slow response to reports of sexual abuse during the October 7 attack. President Herzog’s wife, Michal Herzog, said on Israeli radio on Tuesday that the report was “the first time after five months that a senior UN official has supported what we have been claiming in recent months.”

Hamas rejected the report, calling the findings false.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a group representing the families of the Israeli prisoners, said in a statement Monday evening that the U.N. report made it “abundantly clear that the female hostages are going through hell every moment and every minute.”

Israelis “will not forgive Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the cabinet” if they fail to bring the hostages home, the group said.

Reporting was contributed by Michael D. Shear, Victoria Kim, Farnaz Fassihi And Adam Ragon.