UNRWA: ‘Israel wants to erase us’

(A7) Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA Commissioner-General, has accused Israel of trying to close down the agency.

In an interview with the media, days after 18 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on an UNRWA compound that was alleged by the IDF to shelter terrorists, Lazzarini said that “the Israeli government seeks to close the agency, after failing to convince Western donors to stop funding it on the grounds of ties between UNRWA staff and Hamas.”

“This deliberate attempt to eliminate UNRWA and prevent it from operating will have devastating consequences for the multilateral system, the UN, and the Palestinian goal of self-determination,” claimed Lazzarini. The IDF announced that in an attack on a school where the supposed terrorists were hiding, at least nine Hamas operatives were killed. Lazzarini claimed that the IDF had not notified UNRWA before the attack that the targets were Hamas operatives, and that they were innocent UNRWA employees. He also claimed that since the beginning of the war 220 UNRWA employees had been killed, and called for an independent investigation into their deaths.

“There is a deliberate attempt to eliminate and dismantle the agency and the reason behind that has nothing to do with neutrality issues, but there is a political purpose behind it. Ultimately there is a desire to strip the Palestinians of refugee status and beyond that to undermine the future Palestinian aspiration for self-determination. That is why UNRWA has become such a target.”

“We should make absolutely no mistake that this is more than an attack on UNRWA, but on the broader multilateral system and on the UN. This is a campaign to dismantle UNRWA and push out the broader humanitarian community.”

He also accused the Israeli government of not renewing visas for UNRWA personnel to operate in Gaza: “It is unconscionable that a UN member state call a UN agency whose mandate comes from the UN Security Council to be labeled a terrorist organization. It will set a precedent for other governments to label UN organizations when they act in a way the state does not approve.”