TEL AVIV, 26.10.2023 by EZRA HAMDAH NEWS CORRESPONENT
UN Secretary General António Guterres spoke on Wednesday, hours after Israel said it would stop issuing visas to UN personnel to “teach them a lesson” over Guterres’s initial comments, which were made during a meeting on Tuesday. Officials working for the U.N. who had staff position and offices in Israel are now visa refused, and the diplomatic tensions between Israel and the United Nations are escalating as the dispute unfolds, and it remains to be seen how it will impact their relationship in the long term. United Nations employees across the world are supposed to have automatic access to visas to carry out their work.
Senior UN officials were unable to obtain Israeli visas, after the country decided not to issue visas for the agency’s officials, after the UN Secretary-General angered them. So far they have rejected visas for Deputy Secretary General of Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths, and some of the known officials from East Asia include Dechen Tsering Regional Director and Representative, Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Charles Bernimolin, Trevor Lewis Advisor and Head, Unit for Nonsovereign Operations, Mr. Christopher King Chief, Weapons of Mass Destruction Branch Office for Disarmament Affairs, Keisuke Sadamori Director, Energy Markets and Security, Praveen kumar Chief FIU East Asia, Ann Maymann UNHCR Representative, Barlev Nico Marhehe UNEP Programme Management Officer, Oyunsaikhan Dendevnorov. UNICEF Representative and many more coordinating the humanitarian and official works.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that “any such ban would be unacceptable and frankly, inconceivable. We’re still looking into how this development would affect our operations in the country, and we are expected to have more meetings with the de facto authorities tomorrow in which we’re trying to seek some clarity.”