The Israel Defense Forces, the army that Benjamin Netanyahu defends as “the most moral in the world,” is part of the so-called United Nations blacklist for the first time. It is the one that lists the entities – state or not – that have committed serious violations against children, which this time also includes Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and which is included in an annual report presented on June 13. The coordinator of this document, which analyzes the situation of children in twenty countries, is Virginia Gamba, UN representative for children and armed conflicts, who assures that inclusion in the list “is one of the calls of more energetic attention because the parties to the conflict [Israel y Hamás] “They are doing irreparable harm to children.”
“The situation in Gaza is dramatic. If 40% of the population is under 15 years old, obviously children are the most impacted by the war,” says Gamba (Buenos Aires, 70 years old) in a telematic interview from her office in New York. Among the serious violations against children recognized by the UN, murder, mutilation and kidnapping stand out, as well as sexual violence, forced recruitment and attacks on schools. Over the past year, especially since the start of the war in the Palestinian enclave on October 7, his office has documented that the Israeli army has killed and maimed children, in addition to attacking schools and hospitals, where they were located. . The assaults on these facilities, the representative clarifies, do not translate into inclusion on the list, “although it is a serious violation.”
The United Nations has verified the deaths of nearly 2,300 Palestinian children, mostly in Gaza but also in the West Bank and East Jerusalem over the past year. “The majority of the incidents were due to the use of explosive weapons in populated areas by the Israeli armed and security forces,” the document maintains. Other agencies such as Unicef raise this figure to 14,000 children killed in Gaza alone since the beginning of the Israeli offensive, in response to the Hamas attack on October 7. The mutilation of Palestinian children – another reason for the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, to include Israeli forces on the blacklist – is estimated at almost 2,000, although more than 10,700 complaints remain to be verified.
Gamba admits that he has been in contact with the Netanyahu government for almost two years. Before the offensive in Gaza, both sides had negotiated a plan to prevent violations against children. “Since then we had noticed a pattern [de violencia] that was emerging.” The last time was at the end of May, when the Israeli Executive offered to collaborate with the representative to develop a roadmap, according to the report. However, since it was announced that Guterres would include Israel on this list, just a few days later, “the talks are frozen,” Gamboa laments. “We hope that Israel will take the bull by the horns and sign an action plan to protect children. We don’t know how they are going to act yet,” she adds.
After the organization’s announcement, the Netanyahu Government reacted with fury. “Today the UN has put itself on the blacklist of history by joining the supporters of the Hamas murderers,” the Israeli Prime Minister ironically wrote on the social network X. However, the report also documents the violations against Israeli children. , mostly attributed to the armed wing of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, for killing, maiming and kidnapping them. What does Gamba respond to these types of statements? “Let it never be forgotten that we put Russia on this list for the violations in Ukraine and there was a worse reaction. But we are still alive,” he points out. The final decision rests with the secretary general, says Gamba. “Being included on this list has very important political weight, so [Guterres] “He is the one who assumes this responsibility.”
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The only way to change the call for action is to collaborate with the United Nations to implement measures against violations against children
Paradoxically, the only option Israel has to remove its army from this file — which includes other state actors from Myanmar, Somalia or Yemen, as well as armed groups such as ISIS, the Colombian ELN or Hamas — is by cooperating with the office of Prawn. “The only way to change the call for action is to collaborate with the United Nations to implement measures that reduce and subsequently end violations against children. However, it is very difficult to convince the conflicting parties to establish a joint action plan,” he states.
What consequences does inclusion on this list entail? Gamba does not rule out that Israeli officials could be sanctioned (since States are not punished), although he does warn that very specific conditions must be met, which are not yet met in this situation. “We do not decide if someone is sanctioned, but there has to be a specific committee that does so, in addition to what we already found in the report.” “It has only happened on two occasions,” exemplifies the representative, “when“14 individuals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo were sanctioned, as well as two others from the Ivory Coast.” Each country, however, can interpret this list and can restrict the sale of weapons to these countries or, if necessary, issue sanctions, as the United States and the EU have already done against violent Israeli settlers.
The UN representative, who refuses to classify Israel’s actions as “war crimes” until an international court does so, denounces the difficulties in verifying violations against children in Gaza. “We know these violations occur from medical records or through interviews with Palestinian refugees. It is a hot war situation, so our staff is very vulnerable,” she relates. Despite these obstacles, Gamba remains optimistic that the deaths of so many Palestinian children can not only be verified, but also attributed.
“To give us an idea, we are still verifying violations that ISIS committed against children in Iraq five years ago. I know that everything that happens in Gaza will eventually be known,” she guarantees.
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