UNITED NATIONS: The UN secretary-general will tell the Security Council next week that both Israel and Hamas are violating children’s rights and leaving them exposed to danger in their war to eliminate each other.

The secretary-general annually makes a global list of states and militias that are menacing children and threatening them. Parties on the list have ranged from the Kachin Independence Army in Myanmar to — last year — Russia during its war with Ukraine.
Now Israel is set to join them.
António Guterres sends the list to the Security Council and the council can then decide whether to take action. The United States is one of five veto-wielding permanent council members and has been reluctant to act against Israel, its longtime ally.
Another permanent member is Russia and when the United Nations put Russian forces on its blacklist last year for killing boys and girls and attacking schools and hospitals in Ukraine, the council took no action.
The inclusion of Israel this month will likely just put more of a global spotlight on the country’s conduct of the war in Gaza and increase already high tensions in its relationship with the global body.
The preface of last year’s UN report says it lists parties engaged in “the killing and maiming of children, rape and other forms of sexual violence perpetrated against children, attacks on schools, hospitals and protected persons.”
The head of Guterres’ office called Israel’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, on Friday to inform him that Israel would be in the report when it is sent to the council next week, UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told reporters on Friday.
The militant Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad groups also will be listed.
Israel reacted with outrage, sending news organizations a video of Erdan berating the head of Guterres’ office — who was supposedly on the other end of a phone call — and posting it on X.
“Hamas will continue even more to use schools and hospitals because this shameful decision of the secretary-general will only give Hamas hope to survive and extend the war and extend the suffering,” Erdan wrote in a statement. “Shame on him!”
The Palestinian UN ambassador said that adding Israel to the “‘list of shame,’ will not bring back tens of thousands of our children who were killed by Israel over decades.”
“But it is an important step in the right direction,” Riyad Mansour wrote in a statement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “the UN put itself on the black list of history today” as the move heightened the long-running feud between Israel and the UN and even the routine mechanics of Israel’s dealings with the world body are now fraught with tensions.
The normally equanimous secretary-general’s spokesman broke from the good-natured tone of his noon briefing when asked to discuss the latest development.
“The call was a courtesy afforded to countries that are newly listed on the annex of the report,” Dujarric said. “The partial release of that recording on Twitter is shocking and unacceptable and frankly, something I’ve never seen in my 24 years serving this organization.”
Condemnation of the secretary-general’s decision appeared to bring together Israel’s increasingly fractious leadership — from the right-wing Netanyahu and Erdan to the popular centrist member of the War Cabinet, Benny Gantz.
Gantz cited Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, as saying “it matter not what say the goyim (non-Jews), what is important is what do the Jews.”
For month Israel has faced heavy international criticism over civilian casualties in Gaza and questions about whether it has done enough to prevent them in the eight-month-old war. Two recent airstrikes in Gaza killed dozens of civilians.
UN agencies warned Wednesday that over 1 million Palestinians in Gaza could experience the highest level of starvation by the middle of next month if hostilities continue.
The World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a joint report that hunger is worsening because of heavy restrictions on humanitarian access and the collapse of the local food system in the eight-month Israel-Hamas war.
The proportion of Palestinian women and children being killed in the Israel-Hamas war appears to have declined sharply, an Associated Press analysis of Gaza Health Ministry data has found, a trend that both coincides with Israel’s changing battlefield tactics and contradicts the ministry’s own public statements.
The trend is significant because the death rate for women and children is the best available proxy for civilian casualties in one of the 21st century’s most destructive conflicts. In October, when the war began, it was above 60 percent. For the month of April, it was below 40 percent.
Yet the shift went unnoticed for months by the UN and much of the media, and the Hamas-linked Health Ministry has made no effort to set the record straight.

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has welcomed a call by the leaders of four Western powers to “preserve stability” in the country amid growing fears of a major Israeli military assault.
Najib Mikati said on Friday: “We highly value this stance that supports Lebanon and calls for united efforts to stop the escalation.”
The leaders of France, the US, UK, and Germany on Thursday issued a joint statement calling for a de-escalation in tensions along the border between Lebanon and Israel in line with UN peacekeeping resolutions.
The statement was issued as the leaders took part in commemorative events marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy during the Second World War.
Mikati added: “Our priority is to communicate with Lebanon’s friends worldwide and in decision-making countries to stop the escalation and the Israeli hostilities in southern Lebanon.”
Confrontations between the Israeli army and Hezbollah entered their ninth month this week.
Hostilities have intensified in recent days, with the use of heavy rockets and threats by Israel to launch a full-scale military assault amid the diplomatic deadlock.
Mikati said that diplomatic efforts in the past had protected Lebanon from Israeli attempts to escalate the conflict.
The statement issued by the four Western leaders emphasized the need to work on avoiding regional escalation, he added.
Despite the statement, Israeli war Cabinet member Benny Gantz resumed his threats against Lebanon.
He warned on Friday that an Israeli military operation in Lebanon was inevitable if diplomatic efforts failed.
Israel would not hesitate to use force if the threats faced by northern villages continued, he said.
Hezbollah on Thursday targeted Israeli warplanes with air defense missiles for the first time, a move widely seen as a dangerous security development.
In a statement, Hezbollah said that “these missiles were launched toward planes that violated our airspace and breached the sound barrier in an attempt to scare children.”
Hezbollah claimed that the missiles forced the planes to abandon their missions.
Quoting senior US and Israeli officials, the Israeli Walla news website said that US President Joe Biden’s administration had warned Israel against starting a limited war with Lebanon, citing potential Iranian intervention.
Washington told Israel that a “limited war” in Lebanon or a “small regional war” is not a realistic option because of the risk that it will spin out of control, the website added.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for “a halt to the mutual attacks between Israel and Hezbollah along the border,” while expressing concern over the risk of a “wider conflict with devastating consequences to the region.”
On a related note, Mohammed Ayyad, the Hezbollah member accused of killing an Irish peacekeeper, failed to appear before the military tribunal on Friday.
Ayyad and others are alleged to have fired on a UNIFIL vehicle in Aaqbiye that was heading to Beirut on Dec. 15, 2022, killing the driver and wounding some passengers.
He was released on bail six months after being detained.
Medical reports were submitted to the court stating that Ayyad has a “terminal illness.”
The trial was postponed until February next year.
Ayyad, along with four others who allegedly took part in the incident, are being tried in absentia.