Israel is on a drive to destroy what’s left of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), set up in 1949 to provide for the Palestinians who were made refugees by the founding of Israel. An Israeli Knesset committee approved a pair of bills this week that would ban UNRWA from operating in Israeli territory and end all contact between the government and the UN agency, on the theory that Hamas has infiltrated it. The bill still needs final approval from the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, reported AP. UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini told the UN Security Council yesterday that “legally, the Knesset legislation violates Israel’s obligation under the United Nations Charter and international law.”
Lazzarini stressed that the entire humanitarian response in Gaza rests on UNRWA’s infrastructure and that it “may disintegrate” if the Israeli legislation is adopted. The halt to coordination with Israel, he said, would further disrupt the provision of shelter, food, and health care to Palestinians as winter approaches. More than 650,000 children would lose any hope of resuming their education “and an entire generation would be sacrificed,” Lazzarini said. In the West Bank, he said, “the delivery of education, primary health care, and emergency aid to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees would grind to a halt.”
Lisa Doughten, director of financing and partnerships at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told the UNSC that Gaza is now home to the largest cohort of child amputees in modern history. She relayed UNRWA’s report that 10 children a day in Gaza are losing one or both limbs. “We cannot claim ignorance to what is happening—nor can we afford to look away,” she emphasized. She repeated the call for the UN Security Council and Member States to act, adding, “These atrocities must end.”
Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia warned the UNSC that, by ignoring UN resolutions on settlement of the Palestinian issue, Israel is undermining resolutions that once granted it UN membership.
“I would like to recall that back in 1949 Israel was admitted to the United Nations on condition of the implementation of the two cornerstone resolutions of the General Assembly, namely Resolution 181 that outlines a roadmap of dividing [British] Palestine into two states—Arab and Jewish ones, and Resolution 194 on refugees, which is the basis for the UNRWA,” he said. “Now, we see a paradoxical situation: By dodging the implementation of these resolutions, Israel, as a matter of fact, deliberately and persistently is undermining the resolutions … that made it possible for it to join the United Nations.”
Meanwhile, “the Palestinians are still denied full-fledged membership in the world organization,” Nebenzia noted. “And this is done with the connivance of Israel’s American allies who vetoed the relevant resolutions initiated by the Algerian delegation.”
Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine Ambassador Riyad Mansour laced into Israeli attempts to dismantle UNRWA, which, he said, must be understood in the context of Israel’s attacks on the Palestinian people. If Israel’s aim is to make Gaza unlivable, then it must attack “the backbone of the humanitarian response, UNRWA,” he said. The real target are the Palestinian refugees whom UNRWA serves. He told UNSC members that Israel is “not listening to any one of you. You keep repeating yourself. We have had dozens of meetings. I heard the word ‘must’ maybe one hundred times in this session—‘must have a ceasefire, must have humanitarian assistance’—a long list, but one country is not listening. And you are refusing, collectively, to use the tools available to you to implement its resolutions,” said Mansour.
