The Commissioner General of the UN Reliefs and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, announced on 22 February that the humanitarian body has reached a "breaking point" due to Israel's "concerted effort" to dismantle it.
"It is with profound regret that I must now inform you that UNRWA has reached a breaking point, with Israel's repeated calls to dismantle it and the freezing of funding by donors at a time of unprecedented humanitarian needs in Gaza," Lazzarini says in a letter addressed to the president of the UN General Assembly, adding that the agency's "ability to fulfill the mandate given through General Assembly resolution 302 is now seriously threatened."
https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/letter-commissioner-general-president-general-assembly
"In just over four months in Gaza, there have been more children, more journalists, more medical personnel, and more UN staff killed than anywhere in the world during a conflict," Lazzarini continues, highlighting that over 150 UNRWA facilities have been bombed since the start of Israel's ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza.
He revealed that Tel Aviv ordered the agency to vacate the Kalandia Vocational Training Centre in occupied East Jerusalem and pay a fee of more than $4.5 million for its use. This center was "assigned to UNRWA by Jordan in 1952," Lazzarini points out.
He also lists several forms of harassment by the Israeli state against the UN body, including an attempt by the Israeli deputy mayor of Jerusalem to "evict UNRWA from its HQ of 75 years in East Jerusalem," limiting entry visas for international staff, threats to revoke tax exemption privileges for UNRWA, among other actions.
The desperate plea from Lazzarini was published one day after the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) revealed that the US National Intelligence Council assessed with "low confidence" Israel's claims that a small group of UNRWA staffers participated in the 7 October attack on Israeli settlements in the Gaza envelope.
"In the new report, which was completed last week, the US's National Intelligence Council, a group of veteran intelligence analysts, said it assessed with 'low confidence' that a handful of UNRWA staffers participated in the 7 October attack," the WSJ cites people familiar with the assessment as saying.
"A low-confidence assessment indicates that the US intelligence community believes the claims are plausible but cannot make a stronger assertion because it doesn't have its own independent confirmation," the report adds.
"This assessment casts further significant doubt on the veracity of Israel's claims against UNRWA, which remain allegations without confirmed substantiating evidence," Chris Gunness, a former UNRWA spokesman and current Director of the Myanmar Accountability Project, told Responsible Statecraft.
"If Israel has allegations against UNRWA, it should hand them over to the internal and external investigations currently underway: one by the UN's Office of Internal Oversight and the other headed by a former French minister," Gunness added.
According to an investigation by The Cradle columnist William Van Wagenen, Tel Aviv's allegations against UNRWA are part of a classified plan prepared in advance by the foreign ministry to "destroy" the humanitarian agency for "working against Israel's interests."
"The foreign ministry plan leaked to Israel's Channel 12 on 28 December, set out a three-stage process to eliminate UNRWA in Gaza, using the Hamas-led resistance operation as a pretext: First, prepare a case alleging UNRWA's cooperation with Hamas; second, reduce UNRWA's field of activity and find replacement service providers; and third, transfer UNRWA's responsibilities to another entity," Van Wagenen details.
"If UNRWA is dismantled and replaced by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), as Israel hopes, this will guarantee that Palestinians can only be resettled in third countries and never return to the homes and lands from which Israel forcibly expelled their grandparents during the Nakba," the US investigative journalist adds.
Tel Aviv launched a smear campaign against UNRWA on 26 January, the day the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israeli authorities to take measures to prevent acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip and to allow humanitarian aid to enter the enclave.
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