Sawt Falasteen - 'The UN has betrayed us': Israeli ambassador

Israel has for decades accused various UN bodies of bias against it -- something they deny.

"We feel that the UN has betrayed Israel," ambassador Daniel Meron told AFP in an interview on Tuesday as the fighting with Hamas in Gaza and Lebanon's Hezbollah has increased fears of a wider Mideast conflict.

Meron said his country had long been striving "to find a way to work with the UN, despite our ongoing criticism".

"We would have wanted to continue that," he said, but now "we don't have any trust anymore in the UN".

Everything changed, Meron said, after Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that triggered the deadly campaign in Gaza, alongside escalating strikes with Hezbollah that threaten to unleash all-out war in Lebanon.

UN-linked courts, councils, agencies and staff have accused Israel of using disproportionate force in its retaliatory operation in Gaza, including charges of "war crimes" and "genocide".

But Meron, who took over in July as Israel's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, maintained there had been far less condemnation of Hamas's "barbaric" actions.

He slammed the "moral equivalence" drawn between Israel and "a terror organisation".

The UN, he said, "has betrayed Israel and at the worst time, the worst event that has happened to the State of Israel since its inception in 1948".

- 'Restrained' -

He also pushed back against the condemnation from within the UN system over Israel's escalating airstrikes targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon, which in a matter of days have killed hundreds, mainly civilians, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

"Where was the world for 12 months?" Meron asked, saying the Iran-back militant group and Israel have been locked in near-daily exchanges of fire since October 7, preventing 70,000 displaced people from returning to their homes in northern Israel.

"We have been restrained now for 12 months, but... life in the north of Israel has to go back to what it was," he said.

He reiterated Israel's claim that it is "doing everything it can to avoid" hitting civilian targets, charging though that "Hezbollah is using civilians in Lebanon as human shields".

"They would like us to shoot back and hit civilians so that we can be blamed for killing civilians," he said.

Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Of the 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,495 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.

E.Qaddoumi--SF-PST