While the international community and the head of the UN demanded the “massive arrival of aid in the north of the Gaza Strip”, Israel announced that it will stop working with the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) , the enclave’s main source of humanitarian aid.
“UNRWA is part of the problem and now we will stop working with them. We are actively eliminating the UNRWA service because they are perpetuating the conflict instead of trying to alleviate it,” Israeli government spokesman David Mencer assured reporters yesterday. The Israeli Government takes this drastic measure in the middle of a dispute with the international organization for its alleged unproven links with the Islamist group Hamas.
A day before these statements, UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini assured that Israel had informed them that it would not approve any more humanitarian convoys headed to the north of the strip, where half the population is at imminent risk of starvation , according to a recent UN report. According to what the Israeli spokesman pointed out, the ban seems to extend to the entire territory.
The commissioner recalled that UNRWA, which provides services to almost six million Palestinians in different countries, is in the middle of the war “the main food” for more than two million internally displaced people in the enclave and the only one that can provide a “vital assistance” in the north.
“This is outrageous and makes it intentional to obstruct life-saving assistance during a man-made famine. These restrictions must be lifted”, cried Lazzarini. The commissioner indicated that, if UNRWA is prevented from fulfilling its mandate in Gaza, “time will run faster towards starvation and many more will die of hunger, dehydration and lack of shelter”.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres added to Lazzarini’s condemnation after calling Israel’s decision to slow UNRWA convoys “totally unacceptable”.
Israel has made no secret of its desire to expel the agency from the enclave, while accusing the institution of having direct links to the Islamist group Hamas, after revealing in January that 12 of its 30,000 workers took part in the attacks on 7 of October, although Lazzarini says they did not present conclusive evidence.
However, faced with the need for “urgent action”, UNRWA immediately dismissed these workers and opened an internal investigation, led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, who this week presented her preliminary conclusions, which endorse the neutrality of the agency’s humanitarian activity, although it detected “critical areas”.
As soon as Israel voiced these accusations in January, 18 countries announced that they were withdrawing their funds, including their main donors – the US, Germany, Japan or France – which has meant a budget cut of 450 million of dollars in full emergency response in the Gaza Strip. Some countries such as Canada, Sweden, Australia or the European Union itself have announced in recent weeks their intention to resume funding UNRWA in the face of the inconsistency of the evidence presented by Israel on links with Hamas.
