The five European members of the United Nations Security Council united on Monday to caution businesses that bidding for construction contracts in Jewish communities beyond the so-called “green line” would come with legal consequences and would cause damage to one’s reputation.
Jérôme Bonnafont, French envoy to the global body, made the statement prior to a council session on the Israeli-Palestinian file. Additional council members cited what they said are deteriorating circumstances in Judea and Samaria.
Denmark, Greece, Latvia and the United Kingdom, known as the E5, joined Bonnafont.
The French envoy decried Jewish prayer rights on the Temple Mount—the most sacred Jewish site—Palestinian tax revenue that Israel has withheld due to Palestinian Authority support for terror and Israeli action against the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which Israel and the United States say employed staffers with ties to Palestinian terror groups. The latter includes UNRWA staffers who took part in the Oct. 7 attacks.
Bonnafont focused on Israeli construction plans in the E1 area near Jerusalem, which critics say would eliminate the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria.
The French envoy said that Israel “continues to entrench its control” and that the five countries advise businesses to sit out the bidding process for construction contracts in E1 or other settlement projects. The E5 group said that participation would violate international law and come with “reputational consequences.”
The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights publishes a blacklist of businesses tied to Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem—the only list of such kind for disputed territories.
“While the international community is focused on restoring peace in response to challenges in other parts of the Middle East, we must keep our focus on the implementation of the peace plan and on the significantly deteriorating situation” in Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, Bonnafont said.
A briefing in the council chamber addressed implementation of the council’s Resolution 2334, which passed over an American abstention in the final days of the Obama presidency and which declares that Jewish communities beyond the 1947 armistice lines violate international law.
‘Not neutral experts’
Briefing organizers invited Itay Epshtain, an Israeli lawyer who works with anti-Israel agencies against the Jewish state, to reinforce the conditions of Resolution 2334.
“The U.N. is no longer satisfied with Hamas propaganda,” said Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, in response to Epshtain.
“This time the presidency made an extra effort. It found some of the most radical anti-Israel voices it could find,” the Israeli envoy said.
Danon cited Epshtain and another invited briefer, Palestinian writer Mariam Barghouti, whose antisemitic statements include saying, on the one-year anniversary of Oct. 7, that “Israel has no right to exist” and less than a month prior that “Israel is a threat to the future of humanity.”
“These are not neutral experts,” Danon said.
He noted that Epshtain recently compared U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler and decried the United Nations for presenting people far outside of the mainstream as “Israeli voices.”
Danon spoke more broadly about the U.N.'s role in laundering lies against Israel.
As the Committee to Protect Journalists begins a full review of its database after Palestinian terror groups identified some in the listing of killed journalists as terror operatives, Danon said that the United Nations is partly responsible for the phenomenon of misidentified terrorists.
“A claim is made against Israel. The U.N. repeats it. The world condemns it. Then the truth comes out,” Danon said at the council meeting. “No apology. No correction. No retraction. They move on. Israel will not.”
Danon held up a picture of Mohamed Naser Abu Huwaidi, who was killed in Gaza in late 2023 and whose death the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization director-general condemned as an attack on a journalist.
Earlier this year, Palestinian Islamic Jihad identified Abu Huwaidi as a member of the group, which the United States has identified as a terror organization since 1997.
“UNESCO’s condemnation was public. Its correction? Still missing,” Danon said.
The Israeli envoy cited another example. On June 22, Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, said during a speech laced with anti-Israel statements that “I want to be very clear. We’re talking about a status quo where children are being killed on a daily basis.”
“More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military since the so-called ceasefire,” Mamdani said, as he signed an executive order about workers in the extreme heat. “Even an Al Jazeera journalist, Ahmed Wishah, was killed this past Saturday by an Israeli strike.”
Danon referred to public video footage of Wishah “armed in the streets of Gaza” and called him “a sniper in Hamas’s military wing.”
“This is the pattern,” the Israeli envoy said. “Hamas makes a claim. The NGO ecosystem repeats it. A U.N. report rubber-stamps it. The world’s media broadcasts it, and Israel is condemned before the facts are even checked.”
Danon also noted an Israeli strike in 2024 that eliminated Mohammed Abu Itiwi, an UNRWA employee.
António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, condemned it at the time and called Abu Itiwi “another one of our UNRWA colleagues.”
“But who was that colleague?” Danon asked. “A Hamas nukhba commander. A terrorist involved in the Oct. 7 massacre near Re’im.”
“UNRWA worker or a terrorist?” the Israeli envoy said. “Again, you tell us.”
