The head of a Beirut-based UN agency has resigned after she was ordered by UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres to remove from the agency website controversial report that charged Israel has established an “apartheid regime” of “racial domination” over the Palestinians.

Rima Khalaf Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) announced her resignation in Beirut.

She said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s insistence that the document be removed from the agency’s website led her to quit.

“The secretary general asked me yesterday morning to withdraw (the report). I asked him to rethink his decision, he insisted, so I submitted my resignation from the UN,” Khalaf said.

“We expected of course that Israel and its allies would put huge pressure on the secretary general of the UN so that he would disavow the report, and that they would ask him to withdraw it,” Khalaf, who had also served as an under-secretary-general to Guterres, added.

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley welcomed the news of the resignation. ‘’When someone issues a false and defamatory report in the name of the UN, it is appropriate that the person resign. UN agencies must do a better job of eliminating false and biased work, and I applaud the secretary-general’s decision to distance his good office from it,” she sai.

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon praised Guterres. “The secretary-general’s decision is an important step in ending the bias against Israel at the UN. Anti-Israel activists do not belong in the UN. It is time to put an end to practice in which UN officials use their position to advance their anti-Israel agenda.”

“Over the years,” Danon continued, “Khalaf has worked to harm Israel and advocate for the BDS movement. Her removal from the UN is long overdue.”