United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres blacklisted Hamas on the annual conflict-related sexual violence report on Thursday, the Foreign Ministry announced.
Guterres also called on Israel to give the UN “unfettered access” to investigate the alleged detainee violations, release those arbitrarily detained, and ensure that they are released in a dignified way. He also urged Israel to investigate and prosecute all the allegations.
Guterres had previously written to Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon that he put Israel on notice for potential listing in the next reporting cycle for "significant concerns of patterns of certain forms of sexual violence" that the UN has documented in prisons, a detention center, and a military base.
This is in reference to, among other accounts, the testimonials out of the Sde Teiman detention facility where Palestinians apprehended from Gaza were held.
Danon responded that these were “baseless accusations,” and that the UN should “focus on the horrific war crimes committed by Hamas and the immediate release of all the hostages.”
The blacklisting of Hamas is a bold, declarative, and diplomatic move, and could have practical implications, but that depends on the next steps that are taken. Danon told Channel 12 on Thursday, “What we can do is now take it [the listing] to states that haven't recognized Hamas as a terrorist organization and try to move them in that direction.”
He noted though that “from the UN's perspective, it won't change anything.”
The blacklist is a specifically of parties that are “credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence in situations of armed conflict.” The key term is “patterns,” which indicates that acts of sexual violence committed by Palestinians in the Hamas-led massacre cross-border attack on October 7 were not incidental or random, but intentional and deliberate acts of war.
A special discussion on CRSV at the United Nations is scheduled for Tuesday (August 19).
Documentation of Hamas's crimes
The process of documentation that led to the listing of Hamas, nearly two years after it led the cross-border massacre attack that killed 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage, is a combination of victims’ and witness testimonies and a UN mission to Israel early in 2024, which were bolstered and coalesced by a Dinah Project report last month.
CRSV is notoriously hard to prove, as when such a wide-scale attack takes place, evidence gets destroyed along the way or convoluted. It is therefore hard to gather later and, due to the nature of the attacks, much harder to present as concrete evidence to eventually bring justice.
Additionally, in this case, many of the victims were killed. Another aspect of these types of crimes is that survivors are left with unbearable trauma, and don’t always come forward with their stories, or at least not always right away.
Guterres also called for the “immediate, unconditional, and dignified release of all hostages, while ensuring their humane treatment and for humanitarian access to them pending their release.” Hamas is currently holding 50 people in captivity.