U.N. Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov pledged over the weekend to prevent Hamas, the terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip, from using U.N. funds and facilities for terror purposes.
His remarks followed an appeal by Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, which detailed how Hamas “is educating and training children in Gaza to carry out terrorist attacks by turning terrorists into role models.”
In the letter, the Israeli minister asked Mladenov to denounce Hamas’s “terrorism summer camps” in Gaza, saying that “it is imperative that the United Nations ensure that neither its funds nor its facilities are used to trample on children’s rights in any way.”
“If the U.N. wants to protect the children in Gaza,” Erdan wrote, “it must first and foremost protect them from Hamas.”
The United Nations took nearly a month to respond to the appeal.
“U.N. offices and organizations operating in the Gaza Strip share your concern that children should not be exposed to violence,” Mladenov noted in his reply. “The U.N. takes precautions to ensure that no U.N. infrastructure or funding is somehow linked to such actions.”
While the envoy reiterated the U.N.’s condemnation of “terrorism summer camps,” his reply did not single out Hamas, but rather simply noted that “children belong to schools, in their homes and on playgrounds, and they should not be encouraged to participate in violence of any kind.”
“The U.N. will not hesitate to demand that children’s rights be respected by all Gaza officials, including Hamas,” he wrote.