The UN has added the Israeli military to a list of offenders failing to protect children last year, Israel’s ambassador to the UN says.
Gilad Erdan, who said he had been notified of the decision on Friday, described the decision as “shameful”. Foreign Minister Israel Katz said it would “have consequences for Israel’s relations with the UN”.
A spokesman for the Palestinian president told the Reuters news agency the decision was a step closer to holding Israel accountable for what he called its crimes.Thousands of children have been killed in Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza, and thousands more are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance
The annual list by the secretary general covers the killing of children in conflict and denial of access to aid and targeting of schools and hospitals. It will be included in a report to be presented to the UN Security Council next week.
It was not immediately clear which violations the Israeli army is accused of committing. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad will also be included in the list, reports said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the UN had added itself to the “blacklist of history” and that the Israeli military was the “most moral army in the world”.
Israel launched its offensive after Hamas attacked communities near Gaza on 7 October last year, killing about 1,200 people including 38 children and taking 252 hostages including 42 children, according to Israel’s National Council for the Child.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says 36,731 people have since been killed by Israeli bombardment and ground attacks.
Last month, the UN said at least 7,797 children had been killed during the war based on data relating to identified bodies provided by the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza.
Also last month, the UN revised down the proportion of reported fatalities that were women and children from 69% to 52% of the total number of deaths
Israel said the reduction showed the UN had relied on false data from Hamas. The UN says it is now relying on figures from the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza rather than from the Hamas-run Government Media Office (GMO). The GMO meanwhile says Israeli attacks have killed more than 15,000 children.
On Friday, the Associated Press news agency said its analysis of Gaza’s health ministry data found that the proportion of Palestinian women and children being killed in the Israel-Hamas war appeared to have declined sharply
It quoted an expert at the US non-profit research group CNA as saying this was linked to reduced intensity of Israeli air strikes.
However Israeli air strikes on Gaza have continued. On Thursday morning an air strike reportedly killed at least 35 people at a central Gaza school packed with displaced people. The US said it had seen reports that 14 children were killed in the strike. Israel has named 17 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members it says the strike killed.
