United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday said that it was important to recognize the attacks by Hamas on Israel "did not happen in a vacuum."
Speaking at a U.N. general debate on the Middle East in New York, Guterres said the Palestinian people "have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their lands steadily divorced by settlements and plagued by violence. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing."
Israel, angered by the Secretary-General's remarks, says it will refuse to issue visas for U.N. representatives to teach them a lesson, The Guardian reported.
IDF Spokesman Maj. Marcus Sheff, appearing on "National Report" on Newsmax, said: "Well, I will say that as far as the IDF is concerned, there was an expectation that no decent person could possibly find any justification, any reason for the enormity of the attacks that we saw on Oct. 7 — the massacres, the beheadings, the burnings, the rape, the murders."
Israel will make sure that the Hamas perpetrators will never be able to do that again, he said, and the IDF has been focused on taking out Hamas' leadership, terrorists, and infrastructure.
"It is clearly no longer possible for Hamas to be running Gaza, to be in Gaza, to be the threat that they are to Israel, to Israeli civilians," he said.
The IDF spokesman said he couldn't respond to reports that an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza may be imminent.
The Biden administration has supposedly advised Israel to delay a ground invasion of Gaza, hoping to buy time for hostage negotiations and to allow more humanitarian aid to reach Palestinians, The New York Times reported.
"American officials also want more time to prepare for attacks on U.S. interests in the region from Iran-backed groups, which officials said are likely to intensify once Israel moves its forces fully into Gaza," The New York Times reported.
Sheff said there will be no tolerance whatsoever for attacks from other Iranian-backed actors, including Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Israel will respond immediately if attacked. "We will neutralize the threat. And, you know, those countries like Lebanon and Syria need to ask themselves, very clearly, if they want to risk themselves for murderous ISIS-like Hamas."
About NEWSMAX TV:
NEWSMAX is the fastest-growing cable news channel in America!
Peter Malbin ✉
Peter Malbin, a Newsmax writer, covers news and politics. He has 30 years of news experience, including for the New York Times, New York Post and Newsweek.com.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.