Israel declares UN chief 'persona non grata' over Iran reaction

Israel has barred UN chief Antonio Guterres from entering the occupied territories for not “unequivocally” condemning Iran’s missile attack.

Iran on Tuesday evening launched some 200 ballistic missiles toward the Zionist entity’s military and intelligence bases in a retaliatory attack, dubbed Operation True Promise II, which sent Israelis to underground shelters.

Reacting to the events, Guterres said in a brief statement on X that “the sickening cycle of escalation after escalation” must be stopped, which came after Israel's assassination of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders and an Iranian military commander. 

Citing Guterres’ refusal to "condemn" Iran's response, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz declared the UN chief "persona non grata" in the occupied territories, saying he "does not deserve to set foot on Israeli soil”.

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric criticized Tel Aviv’s reaction as political and “just one more attack, so to speak, on UN staff that we’ve seen from” Israel.

He said the UN traditionally does not recognize the concept of persona non grata as applying to UN staff.

Speaking at an emergency meeting of the 15-member UN Security Council on Wednesday, Guterres, seemingly under pressure, however, said that he “strongly condemns yesterday’s massive missile attack by Iran on Israel.”

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Israel has never stopped challenging the UN's primacy and the history of relations between the entity and the UN is peppered with crises.

However, the relationship has spiraled to new depths since October 7, amid insults and accusations and even a questioning of Israel's continued UN membership. 

Addressing the UN General Assembly last week, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the world body "as nothing more than a contemptuous farce”.

The past year has seen repeated declarations from within the UN system that Israel is committing “genocide” in its war on Gaza, prompting the regime to even accuse the UN chief of being “an accomplice to terror.”

“There has been a great deterioration” in the relationship, said Cyrus Schayegh, an international history and politics professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute. “It has gone from fairly bad to really bad.”

UN-linked courts, councils, agencies, and staff have unleashed a barrage of condemnation and criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Just weeks after launching its war on Gaza, Israel called for Guterres to resign when he asserted that the Palestinian operation inside the Israeli occupied territories on Oct. 7, 2023 “did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”

Francesca Albanese, the UN independent rights expert on the Palestinian territories, recently suggested Israel is becoming a “pariah.”

“Should there be a consideration of its membership as part of this organization, which Israel seems to have zero respect for?” she rhetorically asked journalists last month.

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