Exclusive: US rebuffs Israeli rogues list plea

The Biden administration rebuffed Israeli appeals to pressure the United Nations to remove it from a blacklist of countries and armed groups that have maimed, abducted, or killed children during war, marking a new limit on Washington’s willingness to protect a close military ally for excesses in its war against Hamas. In recent weeks, Israel has sought Washington’s support to dissuade U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres from signaling it out in its annual Children and Armed Conflict report, which was released June 3 and which provides a global survey of abuses by governments and armed groups of children in war. But the U.S. has been unwilling to do so, according to four diplomatic sources. Instead, United States officials have simply counseled Guterres and his advisers to be mindful of the risk that Israel might retaliate diplomatically against the U.N. They also urged the U.N. leadership to ensure that any characterization of crimes against children in the report makes clear that Hamas holds the moral low ground in the conflict. “In various fora and on repeated occasions, we strongly urged the United Nations to see to it that the report is grounded in corroborated facts and reflective of complex realities on the ground,” a U.S. State Department spokesperson told Devex in an emailed response to questions. “We also made clear that any equivalence between Hamas and Israel would be entirely unacceptable and misguided.” Israel’s mission to the United Nations referred questions to its embassy in Washington, which did not respond to a request for comment. The U.S. messaging contrasted with its previous efforts to shield Israel from being investigated for alleged war crimes or being signaled out for abusing children in the course of a conflict. Nearly a decade ago, Samantha Power, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, pressed the then-U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to remove Israel from a draft U.N. rogues list of government forces, rebel movements, and terrorist organizations accused of violating children’s rights. At the time, Israel had just completed “Operation Protective Edge,” a military response to Hamas rocket attacks against Israel. It resulted in the deaths of more than 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including at least 540 Palestinian children, according to a 2105 report by the U.N. secretary-general. Rogues gallery That report’s author Leila Zerrougui, who then served as U.N. special representative to the secretary-general for children and armed conflict, included Israel and Palestinian armed groups in an annex list, a kind of rogues gallery of foreign militaries, rebels, and terrorists that have mistreated children. But Ban and Guterres, facing pressure from Israel and the U.S., have resisted appeals over the years from human rights organizations to reverse course and list Israel, Hamas, and other Palestinian armed groups. Such groups “have consistently encouraged the secretary-general to include Israel on the list based on the data in his own reports,” said Jo Becker, advocacy director of the children's rights division at Human Rights Watch. “The secretary-general reports every year include data on children that have been killed and injured by Israeli forces.” A review of the listing process undertaken by an “eminent persons group,” including Canada’s former ambassador to the U.N., Allan Rock, and Yanghee Lee, a former chair of the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, concluded that the selection process has been “increasingly politicized” and tainted by “double standards,” citing the special treatment accorded to Israel and Saudi Arabia, which threatened to withdraw from the U.N. and withhold hundreds of millions in financial support if it was listed. “Violations by parties in Israel and Palestine have been referenced in every annual report on children and armed conflict since 2005, yet Israel’s military and Palestinian armed groups have never been listed,” according to the report, which was commissioned by the Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, a global network of child rights advocates. Unprecedented scale of death The scale of death and injury has reached unprecedented heights in the months following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas raid on southern Israel, which resulted in the killing of about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and the kidnapping of another 250, including children. The U.N. verified that 43 Israeli children were killed and 27 maimed in the operation. Israel’s counterattack against Hamas has led to the killing of more than 37,000 Palestinians, according to figures produced by the Ministry of Health in Gaza. Back in March, UNICEF cited figures indicating that more than 13,000 Palestinian children had been killed during the Israeli military operation. “Children in Israel and the State of Palestine continue to endure incomprehensible suffering — particularly in the Gaza Strip where the scale of death and destruction are staggering,” Ted Chaiban, the deputy executive director at UNICEF, told government delegations at a Security Council debate on the report Wednesday. “After nearly nine months of horrible conflict, UNICEF and other humanitarian actors are struggling to reach children in need.” Days of carte blanche are over In the weeks leading up to the release of the most recent U.N. report, Guterres and his aides discussed plans to include Israel in the annex with senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The U.S. decision not to back Israel, combined with recent efforts to sanction Israel settlers, and abstain on a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding a cease-fire in Gaza, are part of a carefully calibrated diplomatic effort to rein in Israeli conduct in its months-long military campaign, according to Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “This represents the administration’s effort to speak to the Israelis in a slightly coded but public way, to tell them: The days of carte blanche in Gaza are over,” Ibish told Devex in a telephone interview. “The U.S. is looking for points of leverage that don’t strengthen Hamas or that don’t indicate a lack of sincerity in combating attacks on Israel.” Among the key messages the U.S. is trying to send: “Wrap up Gaza if you want our continuing support. Let in humanitarian aid, finish up Rafah as soon as possible with the least amount of death and damage.” Potential backlash The U.S. has long wielded its influence at the U.N. to shield Israel from international censure or pressure, casting its veto dozens of times since the early 1970s to kill resolutions opposed by Israel. Since Oct. 7, the U.S. has cast its veto four times, blocking the passage of three measures demanding a cease-fire in Gaza, and one against recognizing Palestine as a member state of the United Nations. It has also maintained a steady flow of U.S. weaponry in support of Israel’s military campaign. But on March 25, the U.S. for the first time abstained on a resolution demanding a cease-fire throughout the month of Ramadan, marking its sharpest break with Israel, whose leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has vowed to continue its military offensive until “total victory.” In May, U.S. President Joe Biden threatened to condition certain kinds of military aid if Israel pressed ahead with plans for a ground invasion in Rafah. Ezequiel Heffes, director of Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, said the sheer volume of casualty numbers was likely the “triggering factor” in compelling the U.N. to list Israel and Palestinian armed groups in the annexed rogues list, and dissuading the Americans in lobbying on Israel’s behalf. “There would have been a huge backlash to have these numbers of verified violations and not to have the parties listed.” A matter of shame The U.N. Security Council in 2001 adopted Resolution 1379, which instructed the secretary-general to produce an annual report detailing abuses of children caught up in war. Israel and Hamas have long come under scrutiny but were never included in an annex of dozens of militaries and armed groups, including terrorist organizations. This year, the annex included more than 60 nonstate armed groups and eight state groups, including armed forces of Myanmar, Russia, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen. It cited a total of 32,900 grave violations against children, a 21% increase over 2022, and the highest number ever verified since the U.N. began issuing reports on the plight of children in armed conflict. It identified Israel’s security forces as party to a conflict that “kills and maims children” and “engages in attacks on schools and/or hospitals.” “It should be a matter of shame to every state represented here today that innocent children continue to pay such a terrible price in the multiple conflicts being waged across our world,” former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, himself a refugee of the Korean War, told the Security Council Wednesday. “This reflects a persistent and blatant disregard for international law by those perpetrating these violations, whether government forces or nonstate armed actors, and a sense of impunity that they will not be held accountable for their actions.” Parties listed in the annex are required to engage with the U.N. and prepare a “concrete, time bound action plan” to cease its abuses, according to a 2010 UN report spelling out the delisting process. They can only get off the list once the U.N. verifies that they “have ceased commission of all the said grave violations against children for which the party is listed” and are subjected to monitoring. Guterres’ latest Children and Armed Conflict report — which was released on June 3 — accuses Israel, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian armed groups of committing atrocities against children in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank since Hamas’ raid. But the scale of casualties soared after Israel launched an unprecedented retaliatory strike, leveling major swaths of Gaza, killing tens of thousands, and bringing the enclave to mass starvation. “The conflict in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory presents an unprecedented scale and intensity of grave violations against children, with hostilities leading to an increase in grave violations of 155 per cent,” the report states. “The scale of death and destruction is shocking and unprecedented.” The U.N. report only covers abuses committed in 2023, including the first three months of the eight-and-a-half-month-long conflict in Gaza. It said it received reports of 23,000 grave violations against children, including 3,900 Israeli children and 19,887 Palestinian children, which are pending verification. So far the U.N. has verified 8,009 grave violations against 4,360 children, the vast majority (4,247) Palestinian, and 113 Israeli. It included the verified killing of 2,267 Palestinian children and the maiming of an additional 1,975. The U.N. is still trying to verify reports of some 9,100 children reported killed. “Owing to severe access challenges, in particular in the Gaza Strip, the information presented herein does not represent the full scale of violations against children in this situation,” the report stated. “Most Palestinian children were verified as having been killed by Israeli armed and security forces … many in circumstances raising concerns of unwarranted or excessive use of force.” Israel responded angrily to the U.N. secretary-general’s decision to list them in the report’s annex. Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Gilad Erdan, recorded his reaction to the call from the U.N. notifying him of its plans. “I am utterly shocked and disgusted by this shameful decision of the secretary-general,” he said. “Israel’s army is the most moral army in the world.” The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told the council on Wednesday that Hamas, not Israel, was the biggest villain in the current crisis, and blamed it for thwarting diplomatic efforts to end the war and stop the suffering. “Of course, the fighting could stop today, if Hamas agreed to the deal on the table, to which Israel has already agreed,” she said. “But let me be clear: There is no moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas.”