U.N. Secretary-General spokesperson defends UN $65 million anti-Israel lawfare deal

A UN spokesperson refused to distance Secretary-General Antonio Guterres from a UN deal with Palestinians to give eight UN agencies $65 million over the next five years to brand Israel a criminal enterprise and Israelis as war criminals.

The UN plan is part of a UN development assistance program with the Palestinian Authority known as a UN Development Assistance Program (UNDAF). In a news conference held on November 1, 2017, Secretary-General spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric was repeatedly asked to distance himself from the UNDAF deal. He refused to do so. On the contrary, he said, the agreement "is in line with overall UN policy on the Israel‑Palestine conflict."

The press conference includes:

Question: "Recent reports have examined a document that was signed actually several years... several... several months ago between the UN - about a dozen agencies - and Palestine, entitled something like The Framework for Development: Palestine 2018‑2020. And the focus of some of these reports have been on the allocation of millions of dollars of development assistance to help to support the Palestinians' use of international fora to bring a legal action against Israel. In light of the Secretary‑General's statements about past examples of bias against Israel and the fact that I'm not aware of any other State that has been targeted with UN money to institute legal actions against it, what would be the Secretary‑General's comment on... on... on the... on this particular aspect of the document signed by at least a dozen UN agencies?"

Spokesman: " ...[[T]he Development Assistance Framework for the State of Palestine, which covers... projects the years... years 2018‑2022, as I said, is a public document that was published in August of this year... UNDAF, the UN document, forms the basis of cooperation between the UN and the Government of Palestine on development programming for a five‑year period. The Framework is in line with overall UN policy on the Israel‑Palestine conflict..."