The United Nations (UN) has added the Israeli military to a list of offenders failing to protect children, 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 the decision would “have consequences for Israel’s relations with the UN.”.
A spokesman for the Palestinian president told newsmen that the decision was a step closer to holding Israel accountable for what he called its crimes.
Thousands of children have been killed in the country’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza, and thousands more are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance, the UN says.
The secretary general’s yearly list includes the murder of children during hostilities, denying them access to help, and focusing on hospitals and schools.
Next week, the UN Security Council will be presented with a report that includes it. The offences the Israeli army is alleged to have committed were not immediately apparent.
According to rumours, the list would also include Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, declared that the Israeli military was the “most moral army in the world” and that the UN had joined the “blacklist of history.”.
According to Israel’s National Council for the Child, Israel began its offensive after Hamas targeted neighbourhoods close to Gaza on October 7, 2018, killing around 1,200 people, including 38 children, and kidnapping 252 people, including 42 children.
According to the Gaza-based health ministry administered by Hamas, Israeli ground strikes and airstrikes have killed 36,731 individuals since then.
Based on information about identifiable remains provided by the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, the UN declared last month that at least 7,797 children had died during the conflict.
The UN reduced the percentage of recorded deaths that were women and children from 69% to 52% of all deaths earlier this month.
Israel said the decrease demonstrated the UN’s reliance on erroneous information from Hamas.
The UN claims that instead of using data from the Government Media Office (GMO), which is controlled by Hamas, it is now depending on data from the health ministry in Gaza.
Meanwhile, the GMO claims that over 15,000 children have died as a result of the war.
