Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has ordered the non-renewal of the residency permit for Jonathan Whittall, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Israel, accusing him of spreading false narratives about the Gaza conflict. The move was announced on Sunday via Saar’s official account on X (formerly Twitter).

Whittall, a South African national based in Jerusalem, has been an outspoken critic of the humanitarian situation in Gaza, where over two million Palestinians have been affected by the ongoing conflict. In April, he stated that Gazans were “slowly dying” due to the conditions imposed by Israel’s military campaign against Hamas.

Saar cited what he called Whittall’s “biased and hostile conduct against Israel” and violations of UN neutrality as justification for the decision. The measure marks another step in Israel’s increasingly strained relationship with the UN and its humanitarian arms.

Since the outbreak of the war in October 2023, Israeli authorities have tightened visa regulations for UN staff, particularly those affiliated with OCHA, the UN human rights office (OHCHR), and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), amid accusations of institutional bias.