Photo: Bashar Taleb Agence France-Presse Palestinian women walk past a UNRWA vehicle parked near the Japanese health center in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on October 29.
Agence France-Presse in Jerusalem
Published at 11:01 Updated at 12:23
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An official at UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees banned by Israel from operating in its territory, said Tuesday that the organization was “irreplaceable” because its network helped keep the population of war-ravaged Gaza “alive.”
Despite opposition from its American ally and a warning from the UN Security Council, the Israeli parliament on Monday overwhelmingly passed (92 to 10) a bill banning “UNRWA activities on Israeli territory,” including East Jerusalem, an area occupied and annexed by Israel.
For more than 70 years, UNRWA has provided essential aid and assistance to Palestinian refugees.
Israel, long critical of the agency, has accused UNRWA employees of participating in the October 7, 2023, massacre by Hamas on its soil, which sparked Israeli retaliation.
In recent months, the military has struck several UNRWA schools in Gaza, which it has turned into safe houses, where Israel says fighters from the Palestinian Islamist movement are operating.
According to UNRWA, 230 of its employees have been killed since the war began.
“Irreplaceable”
For Jonathan Fowler, the agency’s spokesman in Jerusalem, the organization is the backbone of humanitarian work in the Palestinian territories, particularly in Gaza.
“UNRWA is irreplaceable, UNRWA is essential. That remains a fact, regardless of the legislation passed yesterday,” Fowler said, calling the bill “outrageous” in an interview with AFP.
With about 18,000 employees between the occupied West Bank and Gaza, including 13,000 teachers and 1,500 health workers, the agency has been providing aid to Palestinian refugees since its creation in 1949.
Photo: Bashar Taleb Agence France-Presse A physiotherapist helps a Palestinian do exercises at the Japanese health center in Khan Younis, in the south from the Gaza Strip on October 29.
UNRWA hopes the decision will be reversed, Fowler said, adding that there is “no prospect of replacing it.”
“It is up to the international community and the Israeli authorities, as members of the international community, to say what is Plan B” if the decision were to actually be implemented in three months, as announced by parliament on Monday.
But unlike other UN agencies that work with external partners such as schools or hospitals to provide services that they fund and coordinate, UNRWA employs its own teachers and health workers, including 13,000 in the Gaza Strip.
“The entire UN system and other international actors rely on UNRWA’s logistics networks and its staff to do what is necessary to try to keep the people of Gaza alive. We are the backbone of that,” Fowler said.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000Jens Elder, a spokesman for UNICEF, which is currently involved in a mass vaccination campaign in Gaza with UNRWA, addressed the logistics issue at a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.
“If UNRWA is unable to operate, the humanitarian system in Gaza will likely collapse. UNICEF will be unable to distribute vital supplies,” she said.
Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO), which is also supporting the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza, said of UNRWA on Tuesday that “3,000 of their employees are health workers, it is truly unique and no agency can compare, including WHO.”
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“Very, very serious”
A second text also voted on Monday prohibits Israeli officials from working with UNRWA and its employees, which is expected to significantly disrupt the agency's activities, while Israel strictly controls all entry of humanitarian shipments destined for Gaza.
“From a coordination perspective, this is a very, very serious problem,” Mr. Fowler insists.
Like other UN agencies and international NGOs, UNRWA relies on contacts with the Israeli military or the Defense Ministry’s agency that handles civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, COGAT, to coordinate the entry of goods into Gaza and the safe movement of its staff.
“In a war situation,” such as the one that has raged in Gaza for more than a year, “it’s even more critical, the ability to move and do our work in relative safety, is likely to be severely hampered by the inability to de-escalate conflict,” Mr. Fowler said.
On a broader scale, the spokesperson expressed concern about the implications of this decision for the future of multilateralism.
“This is a blow to multilateralism. […] It’s not the only place in the world where a government might potentially want to get rid of a UN organization it finds inconvenient.”
UN expert accuses Israel of genocide
A highly controversial UN expert, Francesca Albanese, accused Israel on Tuesday of seeking “the eradication of Palestinians” from their land through “genocide.”
According to the expert, who was mandated by the Human Rights Council but does not speak on behalf of the UN, “the genocide of the Palestinian population appears to be a means to an end: the complete expulsion or eradication of Palestinians from the land to which so much of their identity is attached and which is illegally and openly coveted by Israel.”
Asked in Geneva, the Israeli embassy to the UN did not immediately react to the new accusations by Ms Albanese, who is the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.
“The genocide in Gaza is the story of a tragedy foretold, which risks spreading to other Palestinians placed under Israeli authority,” accuses Ms Albanese, who considers that “the pursuit of the objective of “Greater Israel” threatens to erase the indigenous Palestinian population.”
“The statements and actions of Israeli leaders reflect genocidal intent and conduct; they often invoked the biblical story of Amalek to justify the extermination of the “Gazawis” by erasing Gaza and violently displacing the Palestinians, thus making the Palestinians as a whole legitimate targets,” the Italian lawyer underlines in the conclusions of her report.
The war in Gaza was triggered by the unprecedented attack carried out on October 7, 2023 by Hamas on Israeli territory, which resulted in the death of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data, including hostages killed or killed in captivity.
In retaliation, Israel promised to annihilate the Palestinian movement in power in Gaza since 2007, and launched an offensive that killed at least 43,020 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas government's Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.
Francesca Albanese, rapporteur since spring 2022 and prevented from visiting the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel, is the subject of very violent criticism from Israeli officials who accuse her of anti-Semitism or of having minimized the attack of October 7.
Which she denies, believing that “criticizing Israel’s actions and its policies does not make one anti-Semitic.”
Agence France-Presse, in Geneva