Israel is pushing for a new law to stop the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) from working in the Gaza Strip – with the intense battles there already shuttering the embattled aid group’s operations in the north.
The Israeli parliament has given preliminary approval to designate UNRWA a terrorist organization following allegations that its members are closely affiliated with Hamas.
The humanitarian group had previously fired nine staff members after an internal probe found they may have helped Hamas in some capacity conduct the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel.
It was also revealed last month that a suspended UNRWA worker who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon had also been serving as a Hamas commander in the region.
Israeli officials claimed that thousands of UNRWA members are connected with Hamas in some way, allegations the group has firmly denied as it struggles to provide aid to Palestinian refugees in Gaza.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned Israel’s push to criminalize the UNRWA, which serves the vast majority of Gaza’s nearly 2 million refugees.
“Such a measure would suffocate efforts to ease human suffering and tensions in Gaza, and indeed, the entire Occupied Palestinian Territory,” Guterres told reporters Tuesday.
“It would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster,” he added.
Guterres, who has been banned from Israel for not immediately condemning Iran’s attack on the Jewish state last week, also warned that Israel’s ongoing war campaign in Gaza is leaving even aid groups without the necessary resources to help civilians.
Following the latest bombardments and evacuation calls in northern Gaza, the UNRWA said it needed to pause its work in the area to clear out seven schools sheltering people.
“Ordering civilians to evacuate does not keep them safe if they have no safe place to go and no shelter, food, medicine or water,” Guterres said of the situation.
Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general for the UNRWA, described northern Gaza as a “wasteland” where at least 400,000 are trapped with nowhere else to go.
Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon scoffed at Guterres’ remarks and said Israel was committed to helping the humanitarian effort in Gaza so long as it’s not with the UNRWA.
“Israel works with humanitarian agencies that are actually interested in humanitarian aid and not activism or, in some cases, terrorism,” he told reporters.
With Post wires
