In a region where every gesture can ripple with consequence, UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s recent rejection of Israel’s proposal to manage aid into Gaza is not just disappointing — it is dangerously short-sighted. While the Secretary-General claims to champion humanitarian aid and peace, his refusal to engage constructively with Israeli efforts to regulate and facilitate aid underscores a deeper, troubling pattern of bias. It’s a stance that delegitimizes Israel’s legitimate security concerns while effectively emboldening Hamas — a designated terrorist organization.
The situation in Gaza is tragic and complex. No one can deny the dire humanitarian needs of Gazan civilians caught in the crossfire. But to pretend that aid flows can be managed effectively without addressing the role of Hamas, which has repeatedly diverted aid for its military agenda, is naïve at best and reckless at worst. Israel’s proposal to implement a more structured and secure system for aid oversight is not a blockade — it is a practical measure rooted in hard-learned lessons and the need to protect innocent lives on both sides.
Guterres’s rejection of that proposal is made even more egregious by his blatant double standards. When UN personnel were kidnapped by the Houthis in Yemen earlier this year, all humanitarian operations were immediately suspended. Yet when Israeli civilians suffer an unprecedented massacre on October 7, and 59 hostages (including women, elderly, and children) remain in Hamas captivity, Israel is still expected not only to protect its population but also to facilitate the welfare of those harbouring its abducted citizens.
Where was the UN’s moral outrage then? Where is the consistency?
This hypocrisy erodes the moral credibility of the UN. Guterres’s selective empathy — cutting off aid in Yemen to protect UN staff, yet demanding Israel aid its enemy while its citizens languish in tunnels — reveals an institution increasingly more concerned with posturing than peace.
More troubling is the pattern that has emerged from Guterres’s office. His statements routinely excoriate Israel while offering only vague, mealy-mouthed condemnations of Hamas. Context is often missing — the use of human shields, the appropriation of hospitals and schools for weapons storage, and the intentional embedding of fighters in civilian areas. This asymmetry of outrage distorts global perception and incentivizes terror tactics under the guise of resistance.
Gaza’s civilians deserve aid. They deserve protection. But so do Israeli civilians. Real leadership would recognize that both can be achieved — not by side-lining Israel’s concerns, but by incorporating them into a solution that upholds international law and humanitarian principles. Instead, Guterres has chosen obstruction and moral theatre over realism and responsibility.
At a time when credibility and even-handedness are desperately needed, the UN Secretary-General has chosen ideology over integrity. That doesn’t just undermine Israel — it undermines the very institutions meant to foster peace.
