Jonathan Whittall will leave the country ‘in the near future’ and will not be able to return unless a future application is approved, Israeli officials confirmed
July 21, 2025 10:48
Israel has declined to renew the visa of Jonathan Whittall, director of the Jerusalem branch of UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), citing his allegedly “biased and hostile conduct” towards the Jewish State.
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced yesterday that he instructed his department not to extend the humanitarian chief’s right to stay, accusing him to presenting “falsified reports” and “distorting reality”.
Whitthall, who lives in Jerusalem and frequently visits the Gaza Strip, has been a regular critic of Israel’s conduct of its war against Hamas.
Speaking to the Times of Israel, a Foreign Ministry officials cited a number of statements made by Whitthall as reasoning for his expulsion.
These included his claim that the Israeli-back Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid system was “created to kill” and that “what we are seeing [in Gaza] is carnage. It is weaponised hunger. It is forced displacement. And it’s a death sentence for people just trying to survive".
Confirming the decision, Sa’ar wrote on X: “There is a limit to every scheme.
"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.”
Officials subsequently confirmed that Whittall would be leaving the country “in the near future” and that he would not be allowed to return unless a future visa application was successful.
It comes after similar moves were reportedly made towards the overall head of Ocha, Tom Fletcher, and the director of the UN Refugee Agency (UNCHR), according to a UN spokesperson.
Fletcher told a meeting of the UN Security Council last week: “Each time we report on what we see, we face threats of further reduced access to the civilians we are trying to serve.
"Nowhere today is the tension between our advocacy mandate and delivering aid greater than in Gaza.
"Visas are not renewed or reduced in duration by Israel, explicitly in response to our work on protection of civilians.”
The Israeli mission to the UN said it was “looking into” the claims that the directors’ visas had been refused but criticised the agency’s for what it perceived as pro-Hamas bias.
Reut Shapir Ben-Naftaly, the mission’s political coordinator, said: “We’re presented with a narrative that forces Israel into a defendant’s chair, while Hamas, the very cause of this conflict and the very instigator of the suffering of Israelis and also of Palestinians, goes unmentioned, unchallenged and immune to condemnation.”
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