Diplomatic Bullying: Israel Won’t Renew Visas to UN Workers in West Bank and Gaza
United Nations’ workers wearing protective clothing hand out medicine to a Palestinian man during the outbreak of the coronavirus, at the Beach refugee camp in Gaza City August 27, 2020
The branches of the Offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, or OHCHR, in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are being emptied of members of their international staff, citizens of foreign countries.
Israel is not renewing their work visas and so they are being forced to leave the country. This is an act of diplomatic bullying. Its purpose is to silence and paralyze any international opposition to the occupation and the settlements – and to portray it as antisemitism.
Bullying is our trademark. Of the self-righteous and God-fearing thugs who descend from West Bank hills and the outposts, the darlings of the Israeli establishment, and assault Palestinian olive pickers and shepherds. They are the auxiliary force of the Civil Administration, the Israel Defense Forces and the “honorable” settlements, which are officially authorized to engage in the task of expulsion.
The hooligans of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the Civil Administration and the Regavim NGO are pursuing and persecuting every European-funded humanitarian project in the occupied Palestinian territory in order to destroy it. And the nicely attired bullies from the Foreign Ministry are, in effect, expelling international employees of the United Nations.
Back in February, then-Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz promised to carry out an act of reprisal against OHCHR in the guise of freezing ties with it – because it dared to publish an (incomplete) list of mainly Israeli businesses and corporations (and a few from abroad) that are mired up to their ears in the Israeli settlement enterprise. For anyone who was wondering what “freezing ties” means – the answer came when the ministry failed to extend the staff visas.
Katz made a promise, and the Foreign Ministry headed by former Chief of Staff and Kahol Lavan member Gabi Ashkenazi – is keeping that promise.