Islam Times - UNRWA Chief: UN Agency for Palestinians Facing 'Darkest Hour'

Islam Times - The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) is facing its “darkest hour” and requires ongoing support from UN members after Israel’s decision to ban the organisation, its chief warned.

“Without intervention by member states, UNRWA will collapse, plunging millions of Palestinians into chaos,” Philippe Lazzarini, the agency’s commissioner-general, told the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, according to Al-Jazeera.

He called on the UN – which created UNRWA in 1949 – to prevent implementation of the ban on the organisation in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

In a statement on Monday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced it cancelled a cooperation agreement from 1967 which provided the legal basis of Tel Aviv’s relations with UNRWA.

In January, Israel claimed that a dozen of UNRWA’s Gaza employees were involved in the October 7, 2023 attack on the occupied territories by Hamas. At the time, the UN launched an investigation into Israel’s allegations and terminated the contracts of nine staff members who were accused. However, Lazzarini stated that despite multiple requests, Israel has not provided any evidence to support its claims.

UNRWA announced it takes measures to ensure its neutrality.

But the Israeli ban has raised fears that UNRWA employees will lose their ability to coordinate with Israeli authorities to cross checkpoints and move from one place to another in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

UNRWA provides education, healthcare and other basic services to Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948 during Israel’s creation, and their descendants, who now number nearly six million. Refugee families make up the majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million population.

“In Gaza, dismantling UNRWA will collapse the UN humanitarian response, which relies heavily on the agency’s infrastructure,” Lazzarini stressed.

“In the absence of a capable public administration or state, only UNRWA can deliver education to more than 650,000 girls and boys in Gaza. In the absence of UNRWA, an entire generation will be denied the right to education,” he added.

Since Israel’s war on the besieged enclave began last October, UNRWA itself has suffered heavy losses, with at least 223 of its staff killed and two-thirds of its facilities in Gaza damaged or destroyed.

Riyad Mansour, the permanent observer for the State of Palestine at the UN, told the General Assembly that the ban on UNRWA “is proof of the Israeli genocide in Gaza”.

Several countries have condemned the Israeli government’s decision to ban the UN agency.

Israeli authorities have long called for the agency to be dismantled, arguing that its mission is obsolete and it fosters anti-Israel sentiment among its staff, in its schools and in its wider social mission. UNRWA strongly disputes this characterisation.

In the past, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had urged the United States, Israel’s top ally and the agency’s biggest donor, to roll back its support.

Philemon Yang, the president of the UN General Assembly, has also expressed “deep alarm” at two Israeli laws which “if implemented, would prevent UNRWA from undertaking its essential work”.

“This decision constitutes an intolerable affront to the authority of the General Assembly, to international law and, most importantly, to the human dignity of innocent Palestinian civilians,” Yang stated.