Israel to stop issuing automatic visas to UN employees

Israel will stop granting automatic visas to United Nations employees in retaliation for the way in which its secretary general, António Guterres, and some agencies of the organization reacted to the attack of Hamas in Israeli territory on October 7, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson told EFE.

“We are not going to give visas automatically because of the way the UNfrom the Secretary General and some agencies, responded to the massacre of October 7, giving legitimization to terrorism and remaining silent in the face of the suffering of Israeli citizens“said the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The official specified that the visas will be granted – or not – after a study of “case by case”.

He islamist group Hamas carried out a massive attack against Israel on October 7 that sparked the war and included the launching of rockets and the simultaneous infiltration of some 3,000 militiamen who massacred some 1,200 people and kidnapped another 250 in towns near Loop.

On October 24, Guterres told the UN Security Council that “the attacks of Hamas They didn’t happen in a vacuum.”.

“The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation“, he expressed, in reference to the Israeli occupation and colonization of the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem This since 1967, which contravenes international law and which imposes, according to human rights groups, a reality of “apartheid.”

The Palestiniansthey have seen their lands constantly devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; its economy was suffocated; its people were displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been fading.”he added.

However, Guterres stressed that “The grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the heinous attacks of Hamas. And these atrocious attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”, referring to Israel’s relentless air, land and sea offensive against the Gaza Stripwhich has left almost 21,000 dead, 55,000 injured and 1.9 million displaced.

On December 2, Israel demanded the resignation of the director of UN Women, the Jordanian Sami Bahous, believing that she has assumed a position “embarrassing” about the Hamas attack, for not correctly denouncing the gender crimes committed by the militants.

This occurred the day after the agency rejected “unequivocally Hamas’s brutal attacks on Israel” and expressed the need to investigate “the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence during those attacks”.

On November 22, Israel accused the UN Security Councilto UNICEF already UN Women, of systematically siding with Hamas and ignoring suffering or data about victims provided to them by the Israeli Government.