Israel tells JNS it’s looking into timing after it pays UN $17.6m on day of ICC warrants

Mike Wagenheim

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Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the United Nations secretary-general, briefs reporters at U.N. headquarters on Oct. 9, 2023. Credit: Paulo Filgueiras/U.N. Photo.

The Israeli mission to the United Nations told JNS that it is looking into the timing of its $17.6 million payment of its U.N. dues for the year on Thursday—the same day that the International Criminal Court announced arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the former defense minister.

In so doing, Israel became the 147th of 193 U.N. member states to pay its 2024 dues.

JNS asked Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, at the global body’s press briefing on Thursday if the Jewish state’s dues payment came via automatic deposit.

“If our friend, the comptroller, had automatic access to the bank accounts of 193 countries, I can tell you we would not be in the liquidity crisis that we are in,” Dujarric told JNS. “Every country pays its dues when it’s able to, when it chooses to.”

The International Criminal Court, which is based in The Hague, is a stand-alone body that is not part of the United Nations.

The court issued the arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister and former minister in part over allegations that the Jewish state instituted a policy of starvation of Gazan civilians amid its war against Hamas.

U.N. officials have repeated assessments repeatedly in the past year from the  U.N.-aligned Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which has projected and warned of ongoing famine.

The projections were all subsequently revisited, either revised internally or discredited by the IPC Review Committee.

Much of the data came from the United Nations. For months, Israeli officials have protested that the global body was not reflecting food deliveries into Gaza by outside groups or the private sector in its statistics, which the Jewish state says paints a more dire picture of Gaza where no starvation exists.

To date, the only known malnutrition deaths in Gaza are linked to pre-existing conditions and there is no publicly available evidence of mass starvation.

Karim Khan, The Hague court’s prosecutor, cited the IPC assessments specifically to justify, he said, charges of deliberate Israeli starvation of Gazans.

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‘Not here to arrest people’

Dujarric said at the press briefing that the U.N. secretary-general “respects the work and the independence of the International Criminal Court.”

Despite a long-standing U.N. rule that bars contact between the global body’s officials and those subject to arrest warrants, Dujarric said that Guterres will remain in contact with Netanyahu under an exception, which allows for dealing with “fundamental issues, operational issues and our ability to carry out our mandates, including vital matters of security.”

That issue appears moot for the time being, as Netanyahu has declined to take calls from Guterres since October 2023, after the U.N. secretary-general appeared to justify Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks by claiming that it didn’t occur “in a vacuum.”

The remarks drew condemnation across the Israeli political spectrum, triggering an immediate and harsh deterioration in Israeli-U.N. relations. Last month, Israel Katz, then-Israel’s foreign minister, declared Guterres persona non grata.

A reporter asked Dujarric if Netanyahu would be welcome at future events at the General Assembly, given the United Nations maintains its own security force. “They’re here to keep us safe, to keep the building safe,” the U.N. spokesman said. “They’re not here to arrest people.”

JNS asked Dujarric about media reports that Netanyahu met with government and military officials recently to develop a plan to have a private company take over food distribution in Gaza under Israel Defense Forces protection to try to mitigate massive looting.

Dujarric said he was unaware that the United Nations had been briefed on it.

“We continue to feel that the best way to improve the humanitarian situation of Palestinians is to do it through the international community, the humanitarian operations as they are, including with increased safety and security for them, as well as a big role for the private sector to get the economy going,” he said.

He added that the United Nations couldn’t say if it would cooperate with a private or military Israeli aid delivery program “until we’ve seen something on paper, officially.”

The United Nations has criticized the Jewish state repeatedly for, it says, failing to secure distribution routes and to protect humanitarian convoys in Gaza.

Dujarric said earlier this week that the United Nations does “not accept protection from any warring party,” as it would be “pretty obvious that we would be an even greater target if we were surrounded by armed soldiers from one of the two parties during this conflict.”

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