United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini told AP in an interview on Oct. 30 that newly passed Israeli laws effectively banning the organization’s activities in Israel will leave a vacuum that will cost more lives and create further instability in Gaza and the West Bank. He said that the legislation is “ultimately against the Palestinians themselves,” effectively denying them a functioning provider of lifesaving services, education, and health care. AP reports that 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 put forward no plan for getting food, medicine, and other supplies to Gaza’s population in UNRWA’s absence.
If the Israeli decision is implemented, “this would be a total disaster, it is like throwing [out] the baby with the water,” Lazzarini told AP. “This would create a vacuum. It would also feed more instability in the West Bank and Gaza,” he said. “Having UNRWA ending its activities within the three months would also mean more people will die in Gaza.”
“We have today 1 in 2 persons in Gaza below the age of 18, among them 650,000 girls and boys living in the rubble, deeply traumatized at the age of primary and secondary school,” he said. “Getting rid of UNRWA is also a way to tell these children that you will have no future. We are just sacrificing your education. Education is the only thing which has never, ever been taken away from the Palestinians.”
Lazzarini said the Israeli laws are the “culmination of years of attack against the agency.” He said “the objective is to strip the Palestinian from refugee status.”
AP notes further that 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 Jewish majority in the country. Israel has said the refugees should be taken in by their host countries, and officials often argue that UNRWA’s services keep Palestinians’ hopes for return alive. In an Oct. 28 letter to the president of the UNGA, Lazzarini said the Israeli laws and campaign against the agency “will not terminate the refugee status of the Palestinians, which exists independently of UNRWA’s services, but will severely harm their lives and future.”
