UNRWA head cautions UN agency for Palestinians facing its ‘darkest hour’

“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.

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 said 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 Israel 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 said that despite multiple requests, Israel has not provided any evidence to support its claims.

UNRWA said 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 noted.

“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 Gaza 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”.

Meanwhile, Hadi Hashim, the interim representative for Lebanon at the UN, stated Israel’s ban was a “war crime” and noted that UNRWA was crucial not only in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, but also in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

“We call on the General Assembly to take the necessary and urgent measures legally and politically to stand against this attack not only against UNWRA, but against us all,” he continued.

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, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also called on the United States, Israel’s top ally and the agency’s biggest donor, to roll back its support.