President Zoran Milanovic said on Monday that the Middle East is "a powder keg where there are no good guys" and that it is not necessary to tolerate everything that the Israeli government does, repeating his position that Croatia should have abstained from a recent vote on the UN Gaza resolution.

Last Friday, the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution on the Gaza crisis calling for an immediate and sustained ‘humanitarian truce’, and the document was supported by 120 member states, 14 members, including Croatia, were against and 45 abstained.

This non-binding resolution, proposed by Jordan and some other Arab countries, fails to mention that Hamas had launched the 7 October terrorist attack on Israel and that Hamas was responsible for the killings of civilians, and therefore Croatia voted against such a resolution, the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs (MVEP) reported on Saturday.

The president today insisted that abstaining from the vote was a matter of common sense and honour.

Milanovic elaborated his position, saying that the Croats were not descendants of the Nazis.

“We are descendants mainly of anti-Fascists. I do not have a guilty complex, and if the Germans and the Austrians have it, they should treat it… we have enough integrity ad self-respect to know where our place is and to distinguish between good and what is not good, and the things currently going on (in the Middle East) are not good,” said Milanovic.

Recently the Croatian president said that part of the Israeli administration “reacted very brazenly and rudely” to his earlier statement that Israel “had lost his sympathy” because of the way it responded to the Hamas attack.

He also said then that he had expressed outrage at the killing committed by Hamas.

Israel has the right to self-defence, but that right does not include the right to revenge and massacre of civilians, he said in mid-October.

This provoked the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to call Milanovic’s statement “unheard-of”.

Today, Milanovic said that the reactions from the Israel diplomacy would not shut him up.

Milanovic said also that he would not follow the Israeli ambassador’s suit, whom he accused of being a “rabble-rouser” in Zagreb and of daring to call out the Croatian president, while the Croatian government and the foreign ministry failed to respond to such behaviour.

As for the Gaza resolution, in addition to Croatia, another three EU member states — Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic — voted against.

Milanovic today said that it was incomprehensible to him why Austria voted against the document.

He also called out the Czech Defence Minister, Jana Cernochová, who said that her country should leave the UN membership after the adoption of such resolution.

Milanović said that nobody prevented Czechia from leaving the UN.

The UN is not an ideal organisation. It was both good and bad to Croatia, said the president, adding that during the mandate of UNPROFOR in the Homeland War, it was made possible for Croatia to become consolidated, to have a ceasefire and to build its armed forces and police.

Milanovic also does not see any security threats in Croatia.

During his address to the press today, Milanovic reiterated his criticism against Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and the foreign ministry for not having consulted him before making a decision to vote against the resolution. He criticised Croatia’s permanent representative to the UN, Ivan Simonovic, for having followed the instruction to vote against the document.