UNRWA chief: Agency’s collapse would sow ‘seeds for extremism’ by denying Gaza children an education

An entire generation of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip will “be denied the right to education” if the United Nations Palestinian relief agency UNRWA collapses in the enclave under legislation recently passed by the Knesset, the head of UNRWA warns.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini says the legislation’s implementation “will have catastrophic consequences.”

“In Gaza, dismantling UNRWA will collapse the United Nations humanitarian response, which relies heavily on the agency’s infrastructure,” he tells a UN General Assembly committee. “Glaringly absent from discussions about Gaza without UNRWA, is education.”

“In the absence of a capable public administration or state, only UNRWA can deliver education to more than 660,000 girls and boys across Gaza. In the absence of UNRWA, an entire generation will be denied the right to education,” he says, warning that this would sow “the seeds for marginalization and extremism.”

Lazzarini again pushes UN member states to act on the matter.

Last month, two bills overwhelmingly passed through final votes in the Knesset to ban UNRWA from operating in Israeli territory and bar Israeli authorities from any contact with the agency. The legislation will shutter UNRWA’s operations in East Jerusalem where it provides education, health and civil services to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. It will also severely curtail UNRWA activities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank where the agency relies on coordination with Israel to provide humanitarian aid and other services.

Israel has long had a combative relationship with UNRWA, which it argues has perpetuated the Palestinian refugee crisis by allowing the status to be passed down through generations. Frustration with UNRWA in Jerusalem has picked up over the past decade as Israel has found the Gaza-ruling Hamas terror group embedded within the agency’s infrastructure.

That anger has peaked since Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, in which a number of UNRWA staffers were found to have participated. Israel has gone on to claim that 10 percent of the UN agency’s staff have ties to Hamas, a charge the agency has denied. Israel has also accused Hamas of using UNRWA’s facilities in Gaza for terror activities, and the UN agency of turning a blind eye to the matter.