​UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has wanted to speak to Benjamin Netanyahu twice since the start of the war, but the Israeli prime minister “refused to take the call”, Israel’s UN ambassador Gilad Erdan said on Wednesday, according to the BBC.

“It is not a coincidence” that Antonio Guterres has not come to Israel since the start of the war, he said.

Erdan added that UN agencies had created a “false picture” of the situation on the ground by agreeing to statements about Gaza, even though “everyone knows” that it is controlled by Hamas.

The Israeli official also noted that the next step should be the expulsion from Israel of “hostile UN officials” who present a false picture of what is happening.

Israel continues to react angrily to the statements of the UN Secretary General. The scandal erupted on Tuesday evening after Guterres said that “the attacks by Hamas did not happen out of the blue” and that he was deeply concerned about the “clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are seeing in Gaza”.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, called Guterres’ speech “shocking.” “Mr. Secretary General, what world do you live in? Without a doubt, she is not ours,” he wrote on Twitter, calling for her to resign.

“It’s time to teach them a lesson”

Erdan returned with new statements Wednesday morning on Israel’s army radio and said the country would deny visas to UN officials.

“Because of his statements, we will refuse to issue visas to UN representatives. We have already denied a visa to Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths,” Erdan told Radio Armata.

“It’s time to teach them a lesson,” he added.

Thus, Israel remains in open conflict with the UN, even though Guterres detailed his position overnight in a post on Platform X.

“The grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the terrible attacks of Hamas,” he wrote on the social network, adding, however, that “these terrible attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”