Israel has called for the UN’s Secretary General to resign after he said the Hamas attack on October 7 in which 1,400 people were killed “did not happen in a vacuum.”

 

“The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation,” Guterres said, according to Israeli outlet Haaretz, to the 15-member U.N. Security Council Tuesday after the Hamas-led Ministry of Health in Gaza reported more than 700 Palestinians were killed in 24 hours of Israeli airstrikes, the highest daily death toll since the bombardment began.

“But 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.”

 

After the statement, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan called Guterres’ speech “shocking” on X, formerly Twitter, saying “the Secretary-General is completely disconnected from the reality in our region.”

“There is no justification or point in talking to those who show compassion for the most terrible atrocities committed against the citizens of Israel and the Jewish people,” he added on the social media platform.

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen announced on X he would no longer meet with Guterres.

 

It came after the Hamas-led ministry of health in Gaza reported more than 700 Palestinians were killed in 24 hours of Israeli air strikes, the highest daily death toll since the bombardment began.

 

More than 5,700 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks since the war began, it says, according to the New York Times.

Guterres, 74, succeeded Ban Ki-Moon as the ninth secretary-general of the United Nations in October 2016. He had served as the prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002 as head of the Portuguese Socialist Party.