Israel’s ban on UN aid agencies will lead to more suffering for Palestinians, chief says

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The head of the UN agency that cares for Palestinian refugees said Wednesday that newly passed Israeli laws effectively banning his activities in Israel will leave a vacuum that will cost more lives and create further instability in Gaza and the West Bank.

Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWAtold the Associated Press that the legislation is “ultimately against the Palestinians themselves,” effectively denying them a functioning provider of life-saving services, education and health care.

UNRWA has been the main agency obtaining and distributing aid in the Gaza Strip, where almost the entire population of some 2.3 million Palestinians depends on the organization for survival amid Israel’s nearly 13-month war with the militant Hamas militant group. group.

Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering in UNRWA-run schools. Other aid groups say the agency’s strong, decades-old infrastructure across Gaza is irreplaceable. So far, Israel has not put forward a plan to deliver food, medicine and other supplies to the people of Gaza in the absence of UNRWA.

Israel claims that Hamas and other militants infiltrated UNRWA, used its facilities and received aid – claims for which it has provided little evidence. The laws, passed by parliament this week, cut all ties with UNRWA and ban its activities in Israel.

And since the agency’s activities in Gaza and the West Bank must pass through Israeli authorities, the laws threaten to end operations there as well. The laws are expected to come into effect in three months.

If the Israeli decision is implemented, “this would be a total disaster, it’s like throwing the baby out with the water,” Lazzarini told the AP, speaking in the Saudi capital Riyadh, where he is attending a conference to discuss the Middle East -East conflict.

“This would create a vacuum. It would also lead to more instability in the West Bank and Gaza,” he said. “If UNRWA were to end its activities within three months, it would also mean that more people would die in Gaza.”

He said the agency is looking for “creative ways to keep our operation going.” He appealed for the support of the UN General Assembly and donors to continue providing services and called on Israel to revoke the decision or extend the three-month grace period. He said Israel had not officially communicated with the agency after the passage of the laws.

For decades, UNRWA has operated networks of schools, medical facilities and other services around Gaza and the West Bank – as well as in neighboring Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Particularly in Gaza, it plays an important role in maintaining social services and the economy, as the largest employer in the territory and as a source of education and health care for a large part of the population.

The laws threaten to shut down all these activities, affecting the education and well-being of hundreds of thousands of children well into the future, he said.

“Today we have one in two people in Gaza under the age of 18, including 650,000 girls and boys living in the rubble, deeply traumatized by the age of primary and secondary school,” he said. “Abolishing UNRWA is also a way of telling these children that you have no future. We’re just sacrificing your education. Education is the one thing that has never been taken away from Palestinians.”

UNRWA was founded to help the estimated 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. It now provides support to the refugees and their descendants, who number around 6 million in the region.

Lazzarini said the Israeli laws are the “culmination of years of attacks on the organization.” He said that “the goal is to remove the Palestinian from refugee status.”

International law gives Palestinian refugees and their descendants the right to return to their homes. Israel has refused to allow their return, saying it would end the country’s Jewish majority. Israel has said the refugees should be taken care of by their host countries, and officials often claim that UNRWA services are keeping Palestinians’ hopes of return alive.

In a letter to the UN, Lazzarini said that Israeli laws and the campaign against the organization “will not end the refugee status of Palestinians, which exists independently of the services of UNRWA, but will seriously harm their lives and future.”

Israel claims that hundreds of Palestinian militants work for UNRWA, without providing evidence, and that more than a dozen operatives took part in Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the latest war.

The UN fired nine staffers after an internal investigation found they may have taken part in the attack. UNRWA has nearly 30,000 staff across the region, including 13,000 in Gaza, most of whom are Palestinians. Israel also says Hamas fighters are operating in UNRWA schools and other facilities in Gaza – and have hit many of them with airstrikes.

UNRWA denies knowingly aiding armed groups and says it is acting quickly to clear suspected militants from its ranks.

Lazzarini said Israel did not respond to requests from UNRWA for details of other allegations, including that the organization’s buildings are being used by militant groups. Due to the ongoing fighting, the agency has failed to verify the claims, he said, calling for an independent investigation.

At least 237 UNRWA staff have been killed in the war in Gaza, a toll among UN personnel unprecedented in any other conflict. More than 200 UNRWA facilities have been damaged or destroyed, killing more than 560 people sheltering there.

Lazzarini was speaking on the sidelines of the conference of the Global Alliance for a Two-State Solution, an initiative created by the Saudi government and attended by foreign ministers from Arab, Muslim, African and European countries.

“If we want to be successful in a future political transition, we need an agency like UNRWA to take care of the education and primary health care of the Palestinian refugees” until there is a viable functioning state or government that can do that, he said.

Answers El Deeb writes for the Associated Press. El Deeb reported from Beirut.