UNRWA chief says Israel refusing to approve agency’s food convoys to northern Gaza
Philippe Lazzarini warns decision will worsen shortages, as Israel works to find alternate aid distributors after agency’s workers linked to Oct. 7 attacks
The head of UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA said on Sunday Israel had informed the UN that it will no longer approve UNRWA food convoys to the north of Gaza.
The reported move comes amid efforts by the Israel Defense Forces to shut out and find alternatives to the UN agency, after Jerusalem said a dozen of its staff were involved in the devastating October 7 Hamas onslaught on Israel, and some 1,500 had ties to terror groups.
Israel has started working with other groups in Gaza, such as the UN World Food Programme, to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians instead of UNRWA.
“This is outrageous and makes it intentional to obstruct lifesaving assistance during a man-made famine. These restrictions must be lifted,” UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini said on social media platform X.
UNRWA, which provides aid and services to Palestinian refugees in Gaza and across the region, has been in crisis since its employees were linked to the massacre. UNRWA’s biggest donor, the United States, and several other countries paused their funding, putting the agency’s future in doubt. Some countries including Canada, Australia, and Sweden have since restored funds.
The agency argues that it fills an essential role in providing relief for Gazans, especially during the current war with Hamas, underlined by recent struggles to deliver aid to parts of the Strip, which has led to ratcheted-up criticism of Israel.
UNRWA and Egypt said last week that Lazzarini, who was on a visit to Cairo, was denied entry to Gaza by Israeli authorities. COGAT, the Israeli defense ministry body governing civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said on X that Lazzarini had not followed “the necessary coordination processes and channels” when requesting entry into Gaza.
????# Gaza: as of today, @UNRWA, the main lifeline for #Palestine Refugees, is denied from providing lifesaving assistance to northern Gaza.
Despite the tragedy unfolding under our watch, the Israeli Authorities informed the UN that they will no longer approve any @UNRWA food… pic.twitter.com/lfp9xRQuh1
— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) March 24, 2024
“By preventing UNRWA to fulfill its mandate in Gaza, the clock will tick faster towards famine & many more will die of hunger, dehydration + lack of shelter,” Lazzarini added.
UNRWA was established in 1949 following the war surrounding the founding of Israel, when 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes.
It employs some 30,000 Palestinians to serve the civic and humanitarian needs of 5.9 million descendants of those refugees — in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and vast camps in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. In Gaza, it is providing shelter for some one million people newly displaced by the war between Israel and Hamas, sparked by the October 7 massacre.
Israel has long pushed for UNRWA’s closure, arguing that it helps perpetuate the conflict with the Palestinians since it confers refugee status upon descendants of those originally displaced around the time of Israel’s War of Independence, unlike other refugee groups around the world.
The agency has also been found to employ antisemitic staffers and use textbooks Israel deemed antisemitic and inciting.
UNRWA fired 12 of its employees in January after it received evidence from Israel that they participated in the massacre that sparked the ongoing war.
Earlier this month, a senior European diplomat said on condition of anonymity that Jerusalem was “cynically” making such allegations in order to force UNRWA’s dissolution, after never taking issue with the employee lists it received from the agency in previous years.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman dismissed this account, telling The Times of Israel that the lists it received from UNRWA were partial, did not contain ID numbers necessary for vetting the employees and were sometimes sent a full year after staffers began working for the agency.
Nonetheless, Israel identified Hamas activists on UNRWA’s payroll on several occasions. In 2012, Israel alerted UNRWA that one of its principals, Sohail al-Hindi, was a Hamas activist, but it took until after Hindi’s election to Hamas’s politburo in 2017 for UNRWA to fire him, according to the Foreign Ministry spokesman.
Jacob Magid contributed to this report.
