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Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations said Wednesday that his country will block visas to U.N. representatives after the organization’s head said this month’s attacks by Hamas “did not happen in a vacuum” and noted that the “Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres made a speech about the ongoing crisis in Gaza before the U.N.’s Security Council on Tuesday, in which he also called for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” and said no side in any armed conflict is “above international humanitarian law.”
His remarks provoked an immediate backlash in Israel, with the country’s Ambassador to the U.N., Gilad Erdan, calling for Guterres’ resignation. “You Mr. Secretary General have lost all morality and impartiality,” Erdan said Tuesday, “Because when you say those terrible words—that these heinous attacks ‘did not happen in a vacuum’—you are tolerating terrorism.”