UN chief says Hamas attacks did not occur in vacuum, sparking Israeli fury

Israel is protesting after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appeared to try to explain the impetus behind the Hamas terror group’s attacks on Israel at a UN Security Council meeting on the Israel-Hamas.

“It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” Guterres said. “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”

Guterres added that “the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

Israeli envoy to the UN Gilad Erdan calls Guterres’s remarks “shocking,” “horrible,” and “totally detached from the reality of our region.”

“His comments… constitute a justification for terrorism and murder,” Erdan says. “It’s sad that a person with such views is the head of an organization that arose after the Holocaust.”