United Nations Secretary-Basic Antonio Guterres on Tuesday positioned Israel “on discover” for doable inclusion within the UN’s “blacklist” of nations and teams credibly suspected of committing patterns of sexual violence in armed battle. Alongside the formal warning to Israel, Guterres positioned Hamas on the record for the primary time.
The “blacklist” refers back to the formal annex naming such events within the UN’s annual Report on Battle-Associated Sexual Violence. Within the present draft of the 2025 report — seen by The Instances of Israel and set to be revealed within the coming days — Israel is just not listed within the annex, however Guterres cited “grave concern” in the primary physique of the doc over allegations of sexual violence by Israeli safety forces towards Palestinians in a number of prisons, a detention facility, and a navy base.
In a letter despatched Monday to Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon, Guterres warned that Israel is on watch and might be included in subsequent yr’s annex. He wrote that refusal to grant UN inspectors entry has made verification tough, however says there’s “vital concern” over documented patterns of abuse.
The draft additionally positioned Hamas within the annex for the primary time. The phobia group was not blacklisted final yr, with the UN citing inadequate proof straight linking it to reported assaults and calling for additional investigation.
Hamas’s inclusion follows not too long ago revealed reviews documenting systematic sexual violence each through the October 7, 2023, bloodbath and towards hostages in captivity.
Within the letter to Danon, Guterres listed steps Israel should take to keep away from being blacklisted, together with issuing directives towards sexual violence, creating enforcement and disciplinary techniques, investigating each credible criticism, securing commanders’ private commitments, and granting the UN free entry for monitoring and humanitarian support.
UN Secretary Basic Antonio Guterres speaks throughout a United Nations Safety Council assembly on the Israel-Iran battle on the UN headquarters in New York on June 20, 2025. (ANGELA WEISS / AFP)
Among the many allegations cited by the UN — which included a number of accounts of the rape of Palestinian male detainees — is the reported assault of a detainee throughout his switch final yr to the Sde Teiman facility, which was established after October 7 as a preliminary holding website for captured Hamas members and different suspected terrorists.
In June 2024, navy police arrested 9 troopers in reference to the incident, on costs together with aggravated sodomy. Navy prosecutors later filed an indictment towards 5 reserve troopers on costs of inflicting extreme harm and assault underneath aggravated circumstances, however stopped wanting charging them with aggravated sodomy (a cost equal to rape), which investigators initially suspected.
In a response to Guterres’s warning shared by his workplace, Danon rejected the allegations as “unfounded” and primarily based on “biased publications,” demanding Israel’s removing from any consideration for itemizing, calling for sanctions on Hamas for systematic sexual violence, and searching for an modification to the report back to additional replicate Hamas’s October 7 atrocities and what he referred to as the absence of proof of a sample of such crimes by Israeli forces.
A spokesperson for Danon instructed The Instances of Israel that blacklisting might immediate sanctions or different punitive measures, noting that different listed events, which embody ISIS and al-Qaeda, have a years-long document of systematic sexual violence — a document they stated was under no circumstances similar to Israel’s, making Guterres’s consideration “absurd” and “grave.”
