Guterres stands by UNGA resolution calling for Jews to be removed from Old City of Jerusalem

A spokesman for the secretary-general told JNS that Guterres “has called for an end to the occupation, and he has called for the end of settlements.”

Mike Wagenheim

(JNS)

Prior to the United Nations General Assembly’s vote on Wednesday calling for Jerusalem’s Old City, Judea and Samaria to be Jew-free António Guterres, the global body’s secretary-general, told reporters that he would back implementation of the resolution should it pass.

The Palestinian-drafted resolution, which passed by a 124 to 14 margin with 43 abstentions, is meant to give force to the International Court of Justice’s July advisory opinion, in which the U.N. high court in The Hague declared Israeli presence to be illegal in any area over the 1949 armistice line.

JNS asked Guterres’s spokesman Stéphane Dujarric during a press briefing on Thursday whether the secretary-general now backs the resolution, calling for the Old City in Jerusalem to be Judenrein, which he said he would report.

“He’s the secretary-general of the U.N. If there’s a resolution that passes and that asks him—clearly requests him to do something, he will do so, because those are the instructions he receives from member states,” Dujarric told JNS. “That’s what happened, and he encourages member states to respect the resolutions that are passed.”

JNS noted that the resolution mandates “evacuating all settlers” within a year, and that the United Nations defines settlers as Jews living beyond the 1949 armistice line, including those in Oslo Accords-defined Area C of Judea and Samaria and in Jerusalem’s Old City.

Dujarric denied that is the case. “The language supports an end to the occupation, which is what the secretary general and previous secretary generals have always called for,” he said.

“Those Jews living in the Old City are defined as ‘settlers’ by the United Nations,” JNS said.

“He has called for an end to the occupation, and he has called for the end of settlements, and he’s not,” Dujarric said, before taking another reporter’s question.

The resolution lost support from some countries, which said that it went well beyond the contours of the U.N. court’s advisory opinion. It also bans arms sales to the Israel Defense Forces of any equipment that would be expected reasonably to be used in the territory over the 1949 lines and calls for a boycott of all products produced by Jews in those areas.

Guterres offered no public indication that he disagrees with any part of the resolution.

The eight-page resolution lacks any mention of Israeli security concerns, historic ties to the lands or Hamas’s terror attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7.

General Assembly resolutions lack legal force, but the resolution’s passage on Wednesday is expected to be used in international courts and other fora to seek additional action against the Jewish state.

It is widely expected that the Palestinians will request that the U.N. Security Council take up the issue. Security Council resolutions are binding, but the United States would be expected to thwart such an effort, including with its veto power.