The UN is in disarray over the Israel-Hamas war

The state of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is nearly as old as the United Nations. But it’s hardly ever caused as much havoc at the typically staid institution as it has in the last month.

Israeli officials have called for the secretary-general to resign, a top human rights official stepped down with an angry letter invoking “genocide,” and diplomats on a paralyzed U.N. Security Council are upbraiding each other for being too soft on Hamas, the militant group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

The frustration is palpable in Turtle Bay, the New York neighborhood home to the U.N. headquarters, diplomats and officials say. It courses through WhatsApp messages and the corridors. Informal meetings on totally unrelated topics inevitably turn toward the Middle East.

And it’s getting worse as the body count rises — a number that already includes more than 70 U.N. employees.

“You can feel that tension — it’s definitely a big crisis. The numbers are absolutely staggering,” said one diplomat from a Security Council member country, who like others, was granted anonymity to candidly discuss a sensitive issue. “This adds to the frustration that you will sort of sense in the hallways at the U.N.”

The drama revives the question of whether the United Nations is a useful forum for solving problems or just one to air grievances. Moscow and Beijing are using the moment to erode U.S. influence with countries that identify with the Palestinian cause and resent how their own needs are ignored by Washington.

Richard Gowan, a U.N. analyst with the International Crisis Group, a think tank, said that during many moments of upheaval, U.N. diplomats spar in public but are affable with one another otherwise. “I am hearing that the mood in private is much edgier this time around,” Gowan said.

The new war began when Hamas stormed southern Israel and killed some 1,400 people while taking more than 200 hostage. Israel has since laid siege to the Gaza Strip, launching airstrikes and sending in ground troops. At least 9,000 Palestinians are believed to have been killed, most of them civilians, according to reports citing health officials in the Hamas-controlled territory.

The initial Hamas attack drew denunciations from many corners of the U.N., including Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. But the Security Council — the U.N.’s most powerful body — was immediately riven. While the U.S. demanded countries condemn Hamas by name, some countries reportedly refused — opting for generic condemnations of attacks on civilians.

In the days since, Russia and the United States have quarreled over the texts of potential Security Council resolutions, each accusing the other of bad faith and offering varying descriptions of where they really stand. Members diverge on whether to call for a cease-fire, whether to say Israel has the right to self-defense and whether to even mention the initial attack in statements.

The United States in particular has resisted calls for a cease-fire, saying such a move would undercut Israel’s ability to defend itself, instead backing “humanitarian pauses” — lulls in fighting that could last as little as a few hours.

Russia and to a lesser extent China — who, like the U.S., wield veto power on the council — have led the opposition to the United States. Other countries, including Brazil and the United Arab Emirates, have also played key roles.

So far, no resolution related to the Israel-Hamas war has passed the 15-member body. Russian-backed ones have received too few votes. A Brazilian-led one that earned enough votes was vetoed by the U.S., while a U.S.-led one with enough votes was vetoed by Russia and China.

But the 193-member U.N. General Assembly, where the great powers lack vetoes, overwhelmingly passed a non-binding resolution led by Jordan and other Arab states that called for a humanitarian truce. The measure ultimately passed with 121 votes in favor, 14 against and 44 abstentions.

The United States voted against it, partly because it failed to specifically mention Hamas or the hostages. But even some traditional U.S. allies, such as Australia and the United Kingdom, abstained instead of siding with the United States. France supported the resolution. A Canadian amendment that would have addressed some U.S. and Israeli concerns failed to pass. The U.S. allies in particular have struggled to maintain a variety of interests, including a desire to keep good ties with Arab countries without necessarily upsetting Israel or America.

The results were a striking contrast to U.S.-led resolutions against Russia’s war on Ukraine, which received more than 140 votes. Now, Russia — which has killed numerous Ukrainian civilians and abducted thousands of Ukrainian children — is casting itself as a champion of human rights.

Dmitry Polyanskiy, a senior Russian diplomat at the United Nations, said Russia had no problem calling out Hamas for its brutal attacks, but that Israel and the United States should acknowledge the assault was preceded by decades of Israeli oppression of Palestinians.

He also insisted Russia targets Ukrainian military infrastructure, not civilians. If the U.S. wants to condemn atrocities, he said, “why don’t they condemn what Israel is doing in Gaza?”

U.S. diplomats at the United Nations dismissed Russia’s tactics as ludicrous, noting that U.S. leaders have repeatedly called for Israel to protect civilian lives. As far as America’s standing? They argued that this current crisis won’t affect the U.S. ability to rally countries around other issues, including Ukraine.

“One-sided resolutions, whether they are put forward in the Security Council or the General Assembly, will not help to advance peace,” said Nathan Evans, spokesperson for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. “The only thing that Russia has contributed to this effort are failed resolutions that the vast majority of the Security Council has opposed.”

The modern state of Israel was established in the late 1940s, just a few years after the United Nations, and it has long been a lightning rod at the international body. Its very creation sparked a war. It is often the target of ire from other countries, especially Muslim-majority ones, at the U.N. (In fact, U.S. diplomats argue that recent U.N. votes are in line with past ones related to Israel.)

In a sense, the debates at the United Nations mirror the infighting at other institutions — from the U.S. State Department to the European Union’s executive bodies — over how to approach this new Middle East war. But the reflections are not exactly the same: There has long been more overt sympathy for the Palestinians within the U.N. than, say, the United States government.

This time, the actions of the Israeli ambassador, Gilad Erdan, have startled many in the U.N. system, where decorum is prized.

During at least one U.N. gathering, Erdan wore a yellow star patch on his suit — a reference to an identifying measure used against Jews during the Holocaust. Erdan also has called for the resignation of Guterres, the secretary-general, who has supported a cease-fire and pointed to the long history of Palestinian suffering in discussing the current war.

Israeli officials accused Guterres of effectively justifying the Hamas attack, even though he has condemned them. But Erdan’s call for Guterres to step down galled some U.N.-based diplomats who said Guterres often takes positions that run against the interests of an individual state if he believes it’s in line with U.N. principles.

Erdan said he has no choice in a system he described as tilted against Israel and sympathetic to terrorism by Palestinians who seek to eradicate his country.

“Sometimes I need to shock the U.N. bodies to show them what we truly think about how they treat Israel with double standards that they do not apply to any other country in the world,” he said.

The United Nations, he argued, “can be relevant only to allow countries to explain their decisions and acts. But surely it cannot be the arena now to solve any kind of conflicts.”

The fissures at the U.N. are going beyond the member states and affecting staffers who work for various parts of the institution, such as its refugee and health divisions.

Craig Mokhiber, a U.N. human rights official, wrote a letter on his way out of the job in which he bemoaned the U.N.’s failure to stop what he called a “textbook case of genocide” against the Palestinian people. The letter quickly went public and viral.

There’s distress over the dozens of U.N. employees killed in the war. Many were based in Gaza and died in apparent Israeli bombings. While working for the U.N. abroad often comes with risks, such a large death toll in a short period is rare for the institution.

Inside U.N. offices in New York and beyond, the conversations are often personal. Many Israeli and Palestinian staffers who sit together in various U.N. agencies and try to tackle global challenges have already lost loved ones in the war.

“The U.N. is so unique as a working environment,” one diplomat at the world body said. “People aren’t screaming at each other in the halls or anything like that. It’s just emotional.”