Calls for Israel to ‘punish’ UN

Israeli authorities have called on the government to “punish” the UN’s operations in Jerusalem in retaliation for the passing of an UN Security Council resolution which condemned Israeli settlements last month, Arab48.com reported yesterday.

According to a report by the Israeli TV’s Channel 2, members of the Israeli occupation municipality in Jerusalem sent a message to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asking him to “punish” the international organisation, claiming that its offices in Jerusalem have committed construction violations for years.

The UN has two central offices in occupied Jerusalem in addition to other properties in several areas across the city. One of its offices was the palace of the British High Commissioner during the British Mandate on Palestine and the other is located near an Israeli settlement in the occupied city.

In their message, the officials called for Netanyahu to stop the work of the UN “as an organisation and workers inside the city of Jerusalem” because it carried out unlicensed construction works.

An extremist right-wing municipality member claimed, in the message, that the UN had constructed many buildings around the palace of the High Commissioner without permits, describing the international organisation as “anti-Semitic” and “hostile to Israel and the Jewish people in general”.

The channel said that in the wake of the UN Security Council resolution, the Israeli settlers in Jerusalem started filing complaints against the UN offices in the city, noting that the municipality said it knew about the UN violations prior to the complaint, but it turned a blind eye to them.