UN agency for Palestinian refugees calls on world to save it from Israeli ban

UNITED NATIONS — The head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees on Wednesday called on the world to save him from an Israeli ban that would have “catastrophic consequences” for millions of people caught up in the war in the Gaza Strip.

Philippe Lazzarini, who heads the agency known as UNRWA, told the 193 countries of the UN General Assembly that they must take action to stop Israel from implementing legislation banning the agency’s activities in the Palestinian territories. The laws, passed by Israel’s parliament last month, will take effect in 90 days.

UNRWA was created by the General Assembly in 1949 to assist Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War that followed the creation of Israel, as well as their descendants, until a political solution was found. Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

UNRWA has been the main agency distributing humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip, where almost the entire population of about 2.3 million Palestinians depends on aid to survive Israel’s more than year-long war with Hamas. Experts say hunger is rampant.

Assembly President Philemon Yang told members at an informal meeting on Wednesday that the Israeli legislation “represents an intolerable affront to the authority of this Assembly, an affront to international law and, most importantly, an affront to the human dignity of innocent Palestinian civilians.”

Yang said the assembly extended UNRWA’s mandate (most recently in December 2022) by an overwhelming vote until June 30, 2026. He urged Israel to comply with its international legal obligations, the UN Charter and UN resolutions.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has repeatedly said there is no alternative to UNRWA, and Yang stressed that stopping its activities would “would worsen an already catastrophic humanitarian situation.”

Israel claims that about a dozen of the 13,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in southern Israel that sparked the Gaza War. It recently provided the UN with the names of more than 100 UNRWA employees it says have ties to the militants.

The agency denies it knowingly aids armed groups and says it is moving quickly to clear its employees of any suspected militants. Lazzarini said the UN asked Israel for details so it could investigate but received no response.

Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon repeated Israeli accusations that UNRWA is riddled with Hamas supporters and teaches Palestinian children to “hate.” He stressed that Gaza’s future cannot include Hamas or UNRWA.

Sitting next to released Israeli hostage Mia Shem, he sharply criticized the General Assembly and all other UN bodies for not condemning Hamas or holding a single session on the hostages.

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, repeated calls for countries to act collectively to save UNRWA, accusing Israel of an “open attack” on the agency aimed in part at stripping Palestinians of refugee status and rights.

“As we gather here, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are facing certain death,” he said of northern Gaza.

Acting UN humanitarian chief Joyce Msuya said on Tuesday that the northern Gaza Strip has been under “an almost total brutal siege for the past month” and Palestinian civilians are starving as the world watches.

“These atrocities must stop,” Msuya said in a post on X. “Israeli military ground operations have left Palestinians without the basic necessities of survival, forced them to flee several times for safety, and cut off their routes of escape and supplies.”

Lebanese UN Ambassador Hadi Hashem, speaking on behalf of the 22-member UN Arab Group, called on the General Assembly to confront Israel’s “dangerous precedent” and take urgent action to protect UNRWA and uphold international law.