Guterres warns Israel over sexual violence against Palestinian detainees
Guterres warned of an “increasing number of cases” of abuse as Israel threatened to sever ties with his office after the U.N. sexual violence blacklist decision.
The clash over Gaza’s war record escalated sharply as United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned Israel about an “increasing number of cases” of sexual violence against Palestinian detainees, while Israel moved to freeze contact with his office after landing on the U.N.’s conflict-related sexual violence blacklist.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said the country would cut or freeze ties with Guterres’ office and denounced the decision as outrageous. In a blunt break with the secretary-general, Danon said, “We are done with this secretary-general,” and said Israel’s mission would no longer have contact with Guterres’ office.
The blacklist carries major weight in international diplomacy. The U.N.’s annual report on conflict-related sexual violence is one of the main benchmarks used to identify perpetrators in war zones, and it has previously named armed groups including Hamas. In this case, the U.N. said its findings were based on credible information about alleged sexual violence by Israeli security forces in prisons and other detention centers, including places where U.N. inspectors said they were denied access.
The dispute fits into a broader institutional fight over how the war is documented and judged. The U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, held public hearings in Geneva on March 11 and March 12, 2025, then published a report on March 13, 2025, finding that Israel had increasingly employed sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians since the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks. The commission said those abuses were part of a wider effort to terrorize Palestinians and undermine their self-determination.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights later said in April 2026 that sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians was driving displacement, reinforcing the U.N.’s case that abuse in detention and elsewhere had become part of the broader landscape of the war. Palestinian detainees and rights groups have long alleged rape, sexual violence and physical abuse in Israeli detention facilities, and the latest exchange has turned those allegations into another front in the struggle for international legitimacy.
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