United Nations: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed surprise on Wednesday that his comments had been “misinterpreted” amid an uproar over his comments on the Hamas attack, saying they did not justify Hamas’ acts of terror. “I am surprised by the misinterpretation of some of my statements at the Security Council yesterday,” Guterres told reporters here. It was pointed out that I was justifying the terrorist acts of Hamas. This is wrong.”
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“It is also important to recognize that the attacks carried out by Hamas were not unprovoked,” Guterres told the Security Council meeting. The people of Palestine have been facing suffocation for 56 years. “They have seen their land increasingly occupied by (Jewish) settlements and plagued by violence. Their economies collapsed. Their people displaced and their homes demolished. “Their hopes for a political solution to their plight are disappearing, Guterres said. .”
After the comments, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen canceled his meeting with Guterres at UN headquarters on Tuesday afternoon. Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, later called for Guterres’ resignation, saying Israel should reconsider its relationship with the world body.
Guterres told reporters on Wednesday that he had made it clear at the council on Tuesday that he categorically condemned the horrific and unprecedented acts of terrorism committed by Hamas in Israel on October 7. Guterres reiterated his comments to the council, saying there can never be any justification for the deliberate killing, wounding and abduction of civilians or rocket attacks on civilian targets.
The UN chief also said he also spoke about the grievances of the Palestinian people at the council, “but the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the horrific attacks by Hamas.” “The grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the horrific attacks of Hamas,” Guterres said in a post on ‘X’ on Wednesday. “Those horrific attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
More than 1400 people have died in Israel. Most of these were civilians who were killed in Hamas’ initial attacks in southern Israel. The Ministry of Health in Gaza has said that more than 6,500 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, including more than 2,000 children and 1,100 women, while more than 15,000 have been injured.
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