Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar confirmed on Sunday that he had ordered officials not to extend the visa of a senior United Nations official due to his alleged anti-Israel bias.
Jonathan Whittall, the head of the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the West Bank and Gaza, was residing in Jerusalem and splitting his time between the capital and the Gaza Strip.
“There’s a limit to every scheme,” Sa’ar wrote in a Hebrew-language post on X.
“Following a biased and hostile conduct against Israel — which distorted reality, presented falsified reports, slandered Israel, and even violated the UN’s own rules of neutrality — and in accordance with the recommendation of professional bodies, I instructed not to extend the visa of the head of OCHA’s office in Israel, Jonathan Whittall,” the foreign minister said.
Earlier Sunday, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel that Whittall would conclude his position and leave Israel “in the near future.”
The official pointed to statements made by Whittall last month that the conditions near aid distribution sites in Gaza are “created to kill,” and that “what we are seeing [in Gaza] is carnage. It is weaponized hunger. It is forced displacement. And it’s a death sentence for people just trying to survive.”
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said last week that visas for all three leaders of the UN agencies active in Gaza — OCHA; the human rights agency OHCHR; and the agency supporting Palestinians in Gaza, UNRWA — had not been renewed in recent months.
“Visas are not renewed or reduced in duration by Israel, explicitly in response to our work on protection of civilians,” said OCHA chief Tom Fletcher earlier this month to a UN Security Council meeting.
He described conditions in Gaza as “beyond vocabulary,” with food running out and Palestinians being shot while seeking something to eat. He accused Israel of failing in its obligation under the Geneva Conventions to provide for civilian needs under its rule.
Fletcher noted that “56 percent of the entries denied into Gaza in 2025 were for emergency medical teams — frontline responders who save lives.”
Israel’s UN mission responded that it is “looking into the issue” of Whittall’s visa and criticized UN agencies like OCHA and UNRWA for abandoning neutrality, citing alleged bias and ties to Hamas.
Israel has been sharply critical of UNRWA, even before Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terror assault in southern Israel — accusing the agency of colluding with Hamas and teaching anti-Israel hatred, which UNRWA denies.