Visa will not be extended
Israel throws out UN coordinator for Gaza
December 2, 2023, 1:10 a.m
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Israel has repeatedly complained that UN staff are biased towards the Gaza Strip. There is no objective answer to the allegations. Now the UN coordinator for humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip will not receive another visa.
According to the United Nations, Israel does not want to extend the visa of the UN coordinator for humanitarian affairs in the Palestinian territories, Lynn Hastings. The UN has been informed by the Israeli authorities that Hastings’ visa will not be extended beyond its expiry date, said Guterres’ spokesman Stéphane Dujarric in New York. Israel accuses Hastings of being biased in the current conflict between Israel and the Islamist Hamas.
In December 2020, UN Secretary-General António Guterres appointed the Canadian as deputy special envoy for the Middle East peace process and humanitarian coordinator on site for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Her visa for Israel reportedly expires this month.
Guterres continues to have “full confidence” in Hastings, the UN spokesman said. He declined to say whether Hastings, who currently works from Jerusalem, would be replaced or work from another location in the future. Some public attacks against Hastings on the online service X were “completely unacceptable,” said the UN spokesman, without addressing the Israeli allegations. The Israeli Foreign Ministry criticized Hastings on X at the end of October, saying she was neither “impartial” nor “objective.”
Calls for Guterres to resign
Other UN representatives have also been criticized by Israeli representatives since the beginning of the war between Israel and the radical Islamic Hamas. Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan, for example, repeatedly called for Guterres’ resignation. At the end of October, he announced that Israel would no longer issue visas to UN envoys.
He accused other UN representatives of “spreading lies,” for example about the number of people allegedly killed and injured. “Who provides the UN with these so-called facts? Does this information come from unbiased and impartial third parties?” Erdan asked the UN Security Council. “The answer is no. All information about the situation on the ground that this council receives comes from Hamas and not from international UN staff in Gaza.”